Fenwick17
commented
4 years ago With @RichFlick we recently ran some user testing sessions for the profiles editor. Within that there was a task to edit 'Easter Sunday' opening times. Generally people assume it is a bank holiday, so we needed a way to inform the user Easter Sunday is not a bank holiday
To do this we opted for using the govuk warning text
During the user research testing we found a number of the participants noticed this and then followed the link within the warning text to take them to the appropriate area.
As well as this we are currently using it on the profile viewer pages to tell a user that a GP is not accepting patients.
Again this tested well and users did indeed notice the warning, though there might be future alterations to the content of this.
sarawilcox
davidhunter08
What
https://digital.nhs.uk/blog/transformation-blog/2019/icons-avoid-temptation-and-start-with-user-needs
Why
On the NHS website redesign, we found that icons didn’t help the user understand the importance as icons can be subjective (different meanings to different people).
We also heard worrying things like - "oh, I’d just ignore/skip anything with an icon" as they associated it with banner ads.
The best thing for users of the website was spelling out “This is actually quite urgent info” in the form of a prominent heading (see care cards/warning callouts) - as we found users scanning information via headings.
Anything else
These findings are from the context of icons on pages of health information. It would be great to understand how they work in different contexts, transactional services etc.