In Glyn’s last blog post he talked about our love affair with data. My favourite type of data is qualitative. That’s not to say that quantitative data isn’t important or insightful, it’s crucial – particularly for highlighting behaviours, choices and cliff edges, but I find what people tell us about their experiences (generally unprompted) is far more exciting, especially as we can instantly talk to them about their thoughts and experiences by text message.
We’ve had some great feedback to date, some good and not so good… but thankfully mostly very good.
A number of users have posted their experiences on social media (again, good), whilst other users have sent us quite candid feedback via text message.
Here are ten (slightly tweaked to ensure, complete and utter confidentiality), to give you an idea of what people are telling us…
- can you test for Hepatitis as well?
- you’ve got to have another look at that blood test – I did it, but it wasn’t half difficult
- when will this service be available in my postcode?
- love your service, but I couldn’t manage to do the blood test, so I’ve just sent the other half of the kit back
- thank you so much – so relieved
- thanks for the test kit – I’m going to return in about a month’s time
- urine test easy, blood not so easy
- can I go to another NHS clinic or just this one?
- can you test me for BV too?
The list above tells a tale… when prototyping the service, we spent an awful lot of time on the first part of the user journey; the online order form part of the funnel. But we soon came to realise that it was the second part that deserved most care and attention – the test kit, and particularly the blood test.
To date, [constructive] feedback from users has all but exclusively been about their experiences with the blood test.
Whilst some people complete the blood test in a matter of seconds, others sadly struggle, more often than not failing to provide enough blood.
We knew from our initial research that some users were unlikely to do/return the blood test kit for four reasons; fear of blood, fear of needles (even though we use a tiny lancet), frustration of getting enough blood out and lastly, a perception that perhaps they shouldn’t be doing the test themselves (i.e. a trained clinician should do it for/to them).
Overcoming phobias like hemophobia (fear of blood) and trypanophobia (fear of needles) is going to be difficult, but we do have a window of opportunity to help tend to fears and, sadly in some cases, the reality that some people struggle to reach the mark on the blood vial.
Whilst continuing to search for an alternative, easier/user friendly type of blood test (a lack of CE marking is a headache), we have begun introducing some more, very simple, but hopefully impactful, interventions to try to help user complete the blood test;
Improving support
We know that those who watch the video are much more likely to successfully complete the test, so we have re-shot our video. Over the last 4 months we’ve pulled together a number of useful insights, which we have then turned into helpful tips for users to consider when doing the test. So we’ve redesigned the instructions and added a ‘top tips’ leaflet in the blood test pack too.
Over the next fortnight, we hope to visualise the top tips on the website, using images and/or a second video.
Replacing the lancet
We have sourced a more 'efficient' lancet (put simply, it pierces the skin that little bit deeper, helping blood flow).
No doubt our users will tell us if these iterations and additions help.