NHS • CASE STUDY
NHS App
TIMELINE
4 Months
2024
TEAM
1 Designer (me!)
SKILLS
UI Design
User Research
Motion Design
TOOLS USED
Figma
Jitter
OVERVIEW
NHS app: the one-stop-shop for anything health
This project repositions the NHS as a fundamental mental health resource by leveraging new technologies and existing infrastructure to meet evolving user needs. The redesign transforms the vast NHS knowledge base into an approachable interface that promotes patient engagement and education. Rather than relying on gimmicks like AI therapists, it focuses on tools that support patient care and facilitate communication between patients and medical professionals. The solution required completely rethinking the original app into a modern design that prioritises patient needs while respecting the organisation's resource constraints.
Desired outcomes
Promote patient autonomy and confidence in understanding treatment plans.
Combat misinformation by establishing the NHS app as the primary source of reliable, accessible medical information.
Increase user engagement and reduce friction with mental health services for both new users and existing patients.
Problem SPACE
We're in a mental health crisis, let's do something about it
Users perceive the current NHS app as slow, outdated, and difficult to navigate, with poorly implemented functionality. It fails to educate users about their health, creating reliance on already-stretched NHS staff. Key frustrations include fragmented health services across multiple apps and websites, cumbersome navigation, technical glitches, and limited customisation. This results in a complicated, untrustworthy experience that fails modern digital-first audiences.
OPPORTUNITies
How could users benefit from the ecosystem that the NHS created?
The NHS has built one of the world's largest healthcare knowledge bases, but fails to leverage it effectively. Information remains scattered across platforms, often requiring staff contact for clarification. The app is difficult to navigate, text-heavy, and unfocused, displaying excessive irrelevant information. The following three key opportunities address these challenges:
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Integration
Integrating with APIs like Apple's HealthKit for sharing health data from fitness trackers seamlessly, providing medical professionals with the information they need to make the best decision for the patient.
Consolidation
By combining various existing NHS resources, such as their knowledge base, into a streamlined and user-friendly interface that can boost patient autonomy and avoid unnecessary contact for basic information.
Focus
The existing app fails to efficiently provide the information patients need to take ownership over their treatments. The proposed solution should focus on organising the large amount of information available while prioritising the tasks that users actually want to achieve.
SOLUTION
Core flows
Promoting treatment seeking and adherence.
Clear, guided steps simplify appointment booking. From a single page, users can add events to their calendars and get directions, helping to reduce missed appointments.
Empowering patients through education
When relevant, it displays treatment progress using medical records to engage patients in their care. All tutorials and information are sourced directly from the NHS.
Providing multiple routes for essential tasks
A prominent AI help button improves accessibility by completing tasks or directing users to the appropriate department.
Making NHS resources more accessible
Users can explore general resources in the directory, with options to bookmark articles or use AI text-to-speech for an accessible listening experience.
Consolidating various data points in a single place
Easily search, filter, and export your consolidated medical records, and use AI summaries to quickly understand past appointments. No more deciphering of technical jargon or doctor's handwriting!
RESEARCH
Understanding the context
Primary research included user surveys and interviews to understand experiences and needs. Secondary research covered NHS documentation, app store reviews, and competitor analysis to understand organisational goals and contextualise the app against private alternatives. Although the NHS has an incredibly diverse patient demographic, the project focused specifically on 18 to 34-year-olds, the age group most impacted by mental health and most likely to use digital health tools, while ensuring the final solution remained accessible to all ages.
KEY USER INSIGHTS
The NHS app doesn’t benefit from its reach
Difficult to navigate UI
Users reported text-heavy, repetitive, outdated UI. Lack of colour and graphics made the app feel dull, though text spacing was good. Over half struggled with tasks due to navigation difficulties or technical issues.
Poor treatment understanding
A significant proportion of users lacked understanding about why they were prescribed a treatment or medication and how they worked. Difficulty in navigating NHS services was also reported.
Irrelevant information
Users reported a lack of relevance to the information provided and wished it were more tailored to their needs, allowing for more customisation. All users surveyed agreed that access to medical records is a top priority, with prescriptions and appointments also highlighted.
EXPERIENCE MAPPING
Becoming my users
The resulting knowledge was synthesised through user personas, journey maps, scenarios, flows and an information architecture diagram. This provided a deep understanding of the user's experience, their needs, along with opportunities and other existing solutions that could be adapted or at least learned from.
WIREFRAMES
Brainstorming solutions
Although the original idea was to build a separate NHS mental health app, research showed this wouldn’t best serve users. One of their main frustrations was the fragmentation of information and resources, so a more holistic solution was needed. The first wireframe, therefore, added a mental health tab within a single app, but kept it separate from other health areas.
On reflection, that separation still didn’t match how users experience their health. Physical and mental health are intertwined, and users need support with both. Two dashboards with separate prescriptions and recommendations would be confusing and risk downplaying the role of medication in mental health. The second wireframe resolved this by integrating mental health into the main dashboard, creating a single, unified view of each person’s care.
Prototype
An app that goes beyond the basics
The prototype featured prominent medication buttons serving as shortcuts for ordering and accessing NHS drug safety information. It used the NHS’s iconic blue for familiarity while employing the broader colour palette to distinguish different medications. Navigation was reorganised to prioritise multitasking between pages. Information was grouped into rearrangeable sections. A 3D interactive human model was considered but rejected following user feedback.
Prototype
User testing
I invited back some users to try these prototypes, observed how they used them, how they felt, and noted their feedback.
Realigning with the user’s needs
Users shared their preference that the colour distinction in medications would be more useful for highlighting medications that were due to be reordered rather than differentiating between them.
Most considered the 3D interactive model a gimmick and found it more useful to have their NHS number accessible instead.
Visual cues are crucial
A few users were unclear if an appointment was booked or not due to a lack of visual confirmation to signify task completion.
Some seemed confused when navigating the medical records, when asked they shared that the similarity in the colour palette used for cancelled appointments and user-provided information made them appear related.
REFLECTION
What I learned.
This project highlighted that effective health UX must be holistic, as research revealed that separating mental and physical health worsened the fragmentation patients already face. Consequently, the strategy shifted from a standalone app to a unified dashboard that better serves the user's total care ecosystem. The process also reinforced the importance of prioritising utility over trends. Gimmicky features like a 3D interactive model were discarded in favour of practical elements like accessible NHS numbers. Ultimately, the design succeeded by modernising the experience while strictly adhering to the NHS’s established visual language to ensure familiarity and trust.
