NHS / Care

In 2020 the NHS needed to mobilise volunteers quickly to support the COVID-19 response, and the applications supporting that effort had to be right first time — there was no room for a slow, perfectionist research cycle. I was working on two volunteer-facing web applications for the NHS during this period.

The constraints were unusual: in-person research was impossible (lockdown), the user base was broad and diverse (including older adults, people with limited digital access, and users on older devices), and timelines were measured in weeks. At the same time, accessibility was non-negotiable — a public health service can't exclude the people who need it most.

Research both applications to:

• Understand who the volunteers were, what motivated them, and how they'd actually use the applications.
• Identify usability issues early — on wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes — so the design team could iterate before build.
• Ensure the final interfaces met NHS brand and accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1) for a user base with widely varying digital access and ability.

I owned the research: discovery, personas, testing design and moderation, and accessibility review.

• Discovery with stakeholders: worked with product stakeholders to define each application's objectives, target users and key features, backed by desk research into volunteer behaviour and needs.
• User persona development: ran interviews and surveys with potential volunteers to build personas that directly guided design decisions and user journeys — keeping the design anchored in who these users really were (from students to retirees) rather than a generic "volunteer" stereotype.
• Remote usability testing under lockdown: tested wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes using remote methods to hit project timelines — moderated sessions over Microsoft Teams alongside unmoderated testing via Lookback, adapting to the fact that some participants couldn't install software (I acknowledged the limits of unmoderated testing when app installation was a barrier).
• Iterative design support: worked with the design team to refine interfaces against NHS brand guidelines, feeding each round of findings back in and retesting as designs converged.
• Accessibility compliance: ran thorough accessibility audits against WCAG 2.1 — colour contrast, keyboard navigation, screen reader compatibility, and inclusive considerations for users with additional needs — and worked the fixes into the iterations.

The research fed directly into two volunteer applications that shipped during the pandemic. The outcomes included streamlined user flows, positive user feedback from volunteers, and increased volunteer engagement — contributing to more efficient NHS support when it mattered most. Just as importantly, the accessibility work meant the services worked for users with limited digital access and additional needs, not only for the confident majority.

This project tested how I work when time and access are scarce, and it taught me the value of honest adaptation: we couldn't do everything we'd normally do, so we prioritised what would change the outcome, used remote methods creatively, and were explicit about the limits of the research — recruitment skewed toward digitally confident volunteers, and I'd want a more diverse participant base given more time. It also strengthened my conviction that accessibility isn't a final checklist — it has to be built in from the first wireframe.