The Board of Nursing protects the public from unsafe nursing practices. They also approve nursing education programs and issue licenses. Public trust is the most important aspect of the Board’s work.
To get an edge on the company and their goals, I provided the client a questionnaire in preparation for the Kickoff Meeting. Then I met with the client along with our Product and Project Manager to gather requirements. We interviewed users from different roles about their frustrations, the history and purpose of the website. After our conversation with the client, I determined that the target audience was nurses, students, employers and citizens of all ages. I also noted that some of the 300 registered members have never used the Online System. Staff received a lot calls and had to inform users that the website exist.
I used information I gathered from the session to make assumptions about some of the users that represented the primary audience:
Goals – April is a Registered Nurse who cares for people recovering from surgery. She likes having the opportunity to make people feel better. Her shifts are long and she is very busy. Crisis is a regular part of April’s day.
Needs – April loves her job and have been actively practicing for years. Her nurse’s license is in good standing. When the time comes to renew, she needs the ability to do so online due to her tight schedule.
Frustration – Overtime for April is a must at the hospital. It’s almost impossible for her to miss work and make it to the Nursing office to renew her license.
Goals – Will is a hospital administrator who makes sure that the operations of the hospital are running smoothly. He also oversees and recruit staff.
Needs – Will post openings for new nurses to join the team frequently. Once he finds potential employees, he must follow legal procedures and verify their license. He also needs to check to see if the licensee has been disciplined by the Board of Nursing.
Frustration – Hundreds of nurses apply for positions on a daily basis and takes too much time out of Will’s schedule to check the status of licenses.
I wrote down information/page titles from the content audit on labels, stuck them on individual cards and numbered them to prepare for the session. During the session, I provided instructions to guide the participants through the activity. They organized information into categories that made sense to them. I observed and noted down their frustrations and comments while they were working. At the end of the activity, I photographed the piles and used numbers on the cards to record what the participants did. I analyzed the information by adding the relationship of cards in Optimal Sort and generated reports.
I explored the market segment to see what solutions other nursing sites provided their users. A few sites that I viewed: Florida Nursing Board, Arizona Nursing Board and NC Nursing Board.
I thought about what features will best meet the user’s needs and allow them to complete their goals on the site. I organized the features based off of the business goals and what’s most important to the users. The following priorities were revealed:
I created a hierarchy that matched the user’s needs and displayed it through a sitemap.
I came up with the following solutions for the home page using Sketch:
I used Sketch to create a style for consistency throughout the site. I also referred to the guide for styles when I designed new pages.
I took a number of measures to improve the Board of Nursing website:
The results of the redesign were immediate and productive.