Challenge & Research Goals
Equator, a UK-based digital transformation consultancy, was tasked with redesigning a website for private healthcare services in the UK, a project driven by the need to deeply understand user goals and experiences with the website.
The existing site fell short, focusing on what the healthcare provider offered but failing to address the critical questions users had — questions like, “What is an MRI? Where can I get one? How much will it cost? What do I need to prepare?”
As Bobby Wessels, Service Designer at Equator, added:
There’s a huge knowledge gap when someone decides to book a scan privately.
For many users, this was the beginning of their healthcare journey, a moment filled with urgency and anxiety.
With healthcare, people don’t like to wait.
Yet, the website often buried essential information or made it difficult to access, creating frustration. The research was driven by one core question: what do users need when they visit the website?
By stepping into the users’ shoes, Equator set out to uncover these needs and reimagine the journey to make it seamless, intuitive, and reassuring.
Solution
The team decided to tackle the redesign by focusing on user-centered design and validating decisions through rigorous testing.
The process began with mapping user journeys based on the initial research the team conducted and creating personas to capture the needs, pain points, and goals of different audiences.
We had different audiences and personas, and using the insights from those, we mapped the information architecture.
In healthcare, there’s often a lot of overlap. For example, someone might need an MRI for a knee to diagnose a condition, but they could also require an X-ray.
So, we focused on designing interlinking that would adapt to the needs of different personas.
These insights formed the foundation for a new information architecture designed to address common user questions and improve the findability of critical content.
Using UXtweak, the team conducted tree testing to compare two versions of the site structure — one based on their research and another incorporating client feedback.
We decided to conduct split testing, put both versions to the test and see which performs better.
The user-focused version outperformed, reinforcing the importance of basing decisions on data. Once the structure was validated, designers created prototypes to test them with real users using the Prototype Testing tool.
We tried to keep tasks consistent between tree testing and prototype testing so that we’re comparing apples with apples.
This approach resulted in a 75% success rate and gave the team confidence in the design.
Outcome
By combining user research, iterative testing, and careful consideration of healthcare-specific needs, Equator delivered a design that addressed gaps in the previous site while offering a seamless and intuitive user journey.
The team also had enough data to persuade stakeholders to restrain from making critical changes that would disrupt the user experience:
We had collaborative discussions with stakeholders who had some unresolved questions on some of the elements. To address these concerns, we consistently referred back to the test results, which provided strong evidence of how users navigate and search for information.
By sharing these insights, we were able to demonstrate the importance of maintaining user-centered design decisions. We wanted to ensure user journeys are seamless and avoid potential frustrations that could arise from changes without supporting evidence impacting information findability.
🐝 Why UXtweak?
Bobby notes that recruiting participants through UXtweak’s User Panel was highly convenient for Equator as an agency:
I really appreciate the convenience of being able to quickly obtain a quote and recruit participants through the UXtweak Panel.
It’s invaluable when planning projects, as it allows me to set specific participant attributes that ensures that we are engaging the right audience for testing. This significantly enhances the quality of our research insights.
