We've made some updates to improve the BOB user experience

BOB.health has been live for almost a month, but we’re already working hard to make it even better based on your feedback. With BOB’s COVID-19 module having been created at a rapid pace in response to NHS staff feedback to us, we always knew there would be updates required, but it was important for us to release the tool as quickly as possible in this time of need. Luckily, we have four years’ worth of research under our belt that we were gathering pre-COVID-19 - so we have a wealth of insights - from behavioural scientists, designers and NHS staff to help us along the way. We also have a brilliant team of 24 BOB ambassadors who themselves are NHS staff and are making sure we are on the right track for you.

Our first round of major updates went live this week, so you might have noticed that things look a little different (we hope you agree, for the better!).

Homepage refresh

Firstly, the homepage has had an overhaul to show what you can expect from BOB as clearly as possible, and make sure that the journey to creating a story is understood from the get go. We have tested this new format with a panel of independent testers who were shown the page for 10 seconds before being asked to share their perception of what BOB is about and their takeaways from viewing the page. You may be thinking ‘Why so little time’? Well, that’s because 10 seconds is the average time people spend on a landing page. Various studies have shown that reading behaviour is different online - people don’t read content, they scan it. We had some great results with positive feedback from our testers and, after some final adjustments in the wording, we launched the current homepage.

Story creator page updates

Out with the old

In with the new

For story creators, you will also now see some positive changes to the layout, which will hopefully make the journey of creating an impact story an easier one. Previously, it was a bit confusing to tell which sections needed to be completed, leading to some sections being missed by creators and vital information being omitted from impact stories.

The first main change we made was to make the ‘core details’ section ‘required’ for submission rather than ‘optional’. This was an important update because these questions have been specifically designed to help a creator provide all the ‘how to’ information needed for someone else doing something similar. This will help creators’ impact stories unpack the *how* that tends to be missing in traditional case studies, so it’s a really valuable section for readers to learn from. 

There is also a third section for story completion, which is optional, but can add the finer details that might help someone wanting to do a similar project. This is now much more clearly denoted through colour coding to differentiate it from the other sections.

Finally, for this section, we have also added a progress tracker to each section, so you can now see the percentage completed at a glance.

We’re all ears and would love to hear your feedback. If you’re interested in becoming a BOB user tester, get in touch here.