Open davidhunter08 opened 4 years ago
I did a bit of work on filters for result lists going back a few years ago for NHS eReferral Service - ‘Manage your referral service’ - predominantly mobile.
The original assumption was that users would want to filter a list of shortlisted hospitals based on their specific needs - distance, access, parking etc.
Select clinic screen v1
Filter clinics
Select clinic screen v2
We tested a filter only to find that no one used it (even though they said how important access, parking was to them before we showed the prototype).
What worked best was showing the key top three pieces of information (from user card sorting) for each hospital listing:
Users were happy to scroll through a number of options (we tested with a list of around 15) to assess which was best for them.
A couple of caveats that the majority of users either knew or had a vague idea of what they were going to choose either from previous experience, recommendation, or how fast they wanted to be seen - which meant they already knew about parking and access etc.
Key take away was users were happy to scroll (not filter) as long as the important bits were exposed.
Here's with what we ended up with for beta, without filters.
The screen has since been worked on, incorporating the NHS digital service manual design system styles and patterns.
We explored filters on service search in the very early alpha days on the eRS professional web app - we found autosuggest negated the need in the end. We did have some filters on the worklists screen, which although tested quite well on flat visuals, I wanted to test a responsive version. It never made it out the door, but its here anyway as a reference:
https://ers-admin-prototype.herokuapp.com/worklists/worklists ers/makethenhsbetter
NHS App latest appointments concept includes filtering
In user testing, users wanted to see the soonest available appointments as fast as possible. So we included one pre-question before the search results page (what type of appointment do you need?). And then allowed users to filter further on the search results page.
Sofia Western and Tom Brooks presented at the NHS.UK show and tell on 25th January 2022 and showed the Find a walk-in coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccination site service which now includes a filter on search results pages.
Jack Ruck also mentioned that Find a Service are "currently testing this within some of the service finders as well and we're all joined up in hoping to get it into the design system"
We've used basic filters on the Campaigns hub to narrow down a page of campaign results.
In recent research sessions, the filters have been interacted with and useful to some – particularly with users who are familiar with the content (this is more of a B2B site). There were some expectations for things that weren’t on the site, for example specific health conditions so the labels and categories are very important (as well as the drop down options). There is also a more advanced search on this site so filters are used to help search at a topic only level.
Also noted in https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-design-system-backlog/issues/133
We used filters on the Standards Directory. Most users primarily engaged with the search bar if they knew what they were looking for. Some users haven't noticed the filters; however, once they did, many found them useful, particularly to filter down to relevant care settings and topics. We've implemented filter labels as well to see if they helped users see how and why the results have changed but didn't see much engagement in research. There is more work to be done to explore the labels and how we can make search refinement more useful.
It would be really interesting to see analytics for how people interact with filters across different services. If you have the data, would you mind sharing, please?
We have recently experimented briefly with filters in the NHS.UK search results list. We used a mixture of styles from GOV.UK and specifically MOJ. We made sure to place icons like a 'X' after the word in a button as this was evidenced by the MOJ to be more accessible.
Here are the designs we tested across desktop:
Here are the designs we tested across mobile:
![Search-filter-5 – 6](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/55788270/200281229-9ae62bea-b63d-4be0-bc74-89261a30670e.pn
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We ran our experiment in a live environment, as a smoke test. This means that the filters weren't functional, but simply there to see whether there was an appetite to interact with them. We acknowledge that this may impact the results.
Overall, we found there was a low interaction rate with the filters.
In the first week of the experiment we saw:
In the second week of the experiment:
This data evidences that the number of interactions with filters is not high enough to justify the development cost of building filters for NHS.UK search at this time, and perhaps indicates that users aren't looking to filter health information in this way.
On the NHS Data Standards Directory, we’ve applied a similar filter approach as mentioned above given the knowledge sharing we did with Brie, Maddy and team.
We tested the filters using a dynamic prototype based on live code (so real search results were reflected as users applied filters). Our key findings were around:
In the last two months (between 6th Sept - early this week) we had 312 users of which 44 people used the care settings, 12 people used the topics, so 14% and 4% respectively.
Description: We have designed filters for users to easily refine patient reviews on the ratings and reviews journey for profiles. The filter designs are inspired by the filtering produced by the FAS team. Whilst these designs have not been tested with users yet, we plan to gather insights on the effectiveness of the filters during our upcoming lab session. We will provide an update accordingly based on the user feedback.
Design Thinking:
My team is working on filters for test results in the NHS App
What
Journeys used on Test results in the NHS App (not yet released)
Some insights from usability testing
Screenshots of the design
Also known as: faceted search
What
Help users filter a list of items to see things that are relevant to their task. For example, filtering search results.
Why
Currently used on:
NHS apps libraryNHS apps library is now closedSee also the GOV.UK Design System backlog issue