bencullimore
commented
4 years ago What
The NHS website (NHS.UK) Information Architecture team have been using lede (intro) text on our hub (routing) pages.
Through user testing, we've found hub (routing) pages to be good at breaking down big topic areas such as pregnancy, cancer of COVID-19 into navigable content.
Aside from the links that hub (routing) pages offer; we've found lede text (alongside headings) to be important in placemaking and orientation - providing extra context to users that they're in the right (or wrong) part of the site and they'll be able to find the thing they need close by.
Meeting users placemaking and orientation needs are very important as the majority of users enter the site at various levels through search engines and having text at the top of a hub page helps to reassure them that they're in the right or wrong place.
But this is not to say that lede text is essential and should be applied to all hub (routing) pages on the site. We've found areas such as 'NHS services' and 'Check a symptom' work without, as there is less ambiguity.
Why
- What evidence do you have that services across the NHS need it?
In our discovery tree tests, users had no issue looking into the Health A to Z for everything: medicines, treatments, services etc.
On all tasks, many users default to looking for information in the A-Z. This makes sense as it can be viewed as an index to the site. But without synonyms being an exhaustive list, many users aren't finding the information they seek. Comment from our Top task benchmarking tree test summary in the discovery phase
Looking for unexpected rapid weight loss information under either “Healthy living” or “Health A to Z” ‘Sexually transmitted infections’ and ‘Sexual health’ under S in the ‘Health A to Z’ performed well for the question about a sexually transmitted disease. As did ‘Find a sexual health service’ under ‘NHS services’. Comments from our 3rd tree test summary in Alpha
Whereas in user testing the new Health A to Z (prototype, not live yet https://nhsuk-prototype-ia.azurewebsites.net/lab-7/a-to-z) - we found users expected the A to Z to only contain links to symptoms and condition information.
The headline finding from lab 1:
Some users expressed that if they knew for sure what they were looking for they would go to the A-Z. When they were unsure what something might be they looked in other places to try and find out if they could figure out what it might be - then look again in the A-Z.
Here is the hypothesis we took into lab 2 (including into text)
If there is a brief intro summary on the health A -Z page Then people will know what to expect from that page Because they've had a swift indication of what's included on the health a to z page
The headline outcome from that lab was:
Some people read the intro text and others didn’t. For those that did it helped set expectations about what was in there. Anyone who didn't notice the text, it didn't affect them finding what they were looking for.
We kept the lede summary text on the Health A to Z page for subsequent labs and found that whilst it wasn't commented on specifically, users were going to the health a to z expecting to find more than just conditions and symptoms.
We have seen people looking for information through lots of different routes. People using A - Z and "M" for medicines, A- Z and "E" for eye tests when looking for Diabetic eye screening as examples. (Lab 4)
It's difficult to summarise the effectiveness of the lede text as its hard to quantify in isolation. We definitely saw an increase in users understanding what to expect on the Health A to Z, and it helped them find what information they needed - but I believe its success is based on a number of things including clear headings and link labels and hub pages that meet users expectations.
BrieWhyatt
sarawilcox
markasrobinson
What
A style for lede text.
Why
Many NHS sites use lede text:
NHS.uk:
NHS.UK:
NHS service manual:
NHSX: