Januarynotes
Some of the things I have been doing
I have been showing and sharing the user centred design maturity model. I have had a lot of requests to do a show and tell or have a conversation about it from both inside our organisation, the wider NHS, cross government, and charities. I’ve already done a few and have a few more booked in. It’s great that the model is useful more widely. I am supportive of anything that helps to support and develop capability. It would be easy to just share the mural board and all our resources without a conversation but what is key to this model is that it is not ‘done to’ teams. It is not an assessment; it is an independently facilitated conversation. It is not another hoop or assurance gateway to get through; it is a tool that supports teams that are subject to those hoops and assurance gateways. I am keen to ensure that this is what the model is used for so the ethos behind it is a key part of sharing it. There are so many expectations put upon teams about the way they should be working and standards to meet. If we don’t support them with tools that help them to understand what those standards or good practice looks like in practical day to day reality, we are setting them up to fail.
The external team we had in place to support the further development of the model have now rolled off the project so I have also been working to create the space and internal capability to keep the work moving forward on a long term basis. The UCD maturity model community of practice is one part of this and I will be chairing these meet ups monthly moving forward. At this month’s session we collated our joint learning so far on delivering the review sessions and looked at how we can support teams to remove any blockers to action.
I attended the Digital Primary Care Evaluation and Research Network (DPCERN) where research colleagues from the University of Oxford discussed their findings on safeguarding during a pandemic and virtual triage pathways to care, and research colleagues from Warwick discussed the experience of both older people and GP practices use of ‘telephone first’ approaches. There were some links into work we are doing in NHSD so I joined them together via introductions to colleagues working in the same space.
I also attended the Digital Healthcare Inequalities steering group, chaired by Bola which aims to look at how we support regional, system and local action in this area. I’m looking forward to working with as a member of this board to collaboratively take action to drive greater equity across the NHS.
I met with colleagues from across our citizen health tech area to hear about findings from a discovery into additional language and discuss what action we will take. This was a really important piece of work that is relevant to all our products and services and it was evident that the team involved are passionate about driving action from it. I intend to do what I can to support that.
I had a meeting with colleagues leading our benefits, implementation and economics teams to discuss collaborative working. There are a number of professions that need to ensure they are involved in product development from the very start so that their area of work is considered early on and we achieve the intended outcomes from what we deliver. The need to push to be involved early enough is something that many designers, user researchers and content designers will be familiar with, but it is also an issue for our benefits, implementation, economics and clinical colleagues. We have agreed to meet again to discuss our joint learning and work out how we can collaboratively support teams moving forward.
I attended the cross org UCD as a profession steering group and met with one of the teams working on this space to download all I know about the UCD professions that we have in our organisation and the tools we have to support them.
I have been working with Claire on how we take our learning from establishing research operations capability to further establish a UCD ops capability, what that means in terms of resources, budget and work. I’ve also been doing a lot of number crunching and financial forecasting as part of the business planning process for the central UCD team. I took part in a retro on our recent recruitment campaigns, interviewed people for lead user researcher roles and shortlisted candidates for senior roles.
What have I been thinking about
Numbers. Quantitative data is really valuable and if used in the right way can give you some good pointers about what to look at in more depth. To understand impact though you need to look beneath the numbers. Eva’s blog post got me thinking about this as well as other conversations about data https://eva-lake.medium.com/2021-reflections-and-numbers-efcf9193a7c5.
It reminded me of research that I conducted to evaluate a crime reduction programme when I worked in academia. One of the things we were tasked with was looking at the impact of a domestic violence programme. One way of measuring would be about the number of domestic violence related crimes reported to police. If it went up then more people were using a reporting service but was this a good thing or a bad thing? Did more people using a service mean that there was more domestic violence or more people feeling able and supported to report it? For our products and services, how do we know that more people using or doing something means that we are achieving the right outcomes for our users and the NHS? We need to be focussing on outcomes not outputs.
Separate to my role at NHS Digital, this month I also gave my annual lecture about the BRCA genetic mutation to mammography students at a local university. I deliver this jointly with a genetic counsellor who delivers the detailed information about genetics and BRCA mutations. My focus is why awareness of the mutation is important for health professionals and the community. A key part of this is talking about my lived experience. The feedback and response from students in the session is that my talk is incredible impactful. It is always an incredibly worthwhile session for me but also reminds me how draining it is to talk about your experiences, particularly when a large part of it has involved losing a loved one. We need to be mindful of this as user researchers too.
Related to this, it is world cancer day on 4th February. The theme this year is ‘close the gap.’ I personally am privileged to have had access to information and tests that mean that I know I have a genetic mutation that increases my risk of certain cancers. I am also privileged to have had the choice to take preventative action and access surgery to reduce my risk. If my mum had had that privilege, she might still be here today.
Across the world there is inequity in cancer care (and other care too), whether that be due to income, education, geographical location or discrimination based on ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability and lifestyle. I have been thinking about how I might use my power and privilege to raise awareness of the equity gap and take action to help close it. There is more about world cancer day here www.worldcancerday.org
Some of the things I am doing in February
Numerous show and tells and meetings about the UCD maturity model and supporting others to utilise it
Welcoming new people into our growing research ops and central UCD team
Knowledge management project
Inclusive design toolkit project kick off
Digital Health Inequalities Steering Board
Catch up with my women’s network mentee
