Reflections on an unprecedented first year at CQC
Rose Edmands and Kelly Garlick, The Care Quality Commission.
It goes without saying that 2020 has been a tough one, both personally and professionally. We’ve all been affected in many ways, like dealing with the constant cancellations, changing of plans and being distanced from our loved ones. However, I didn’t want to solely focus this blog on the year of 2020 (which is probably a good thing!) and instead, wanted to focus on my experiences throughout my first year at CQC.
It was December 2019 when I joined CQC and I immediately got stuck into the Registration project as a Senior User Researcher. Now that I’m able to look back on the year workwise, it is clear how far the team and project has come and there have been many great achievements that I’d like to remember as we head into the new year. It appears that 2020 hasn’t been a total waste after all…
Of course, my first few months at CQC were pretty ‘normal’ in that we conducted research sessions both remotely and in person during our sprints, gathering evidence and insights on the prototype ahead of our private beta launch. However, March quickly approached, and we were thrown into full time home working due to the pandemic. Back then we had no idea that 9 months later the office would be a distant memory, but as soon as we became home workers, we reviewed our ways of working and how we’d cope with this.
Due to the geographical spread of the Registration team, we had a slight advantage in that we carried out a lot of work remotely anyway. This meant we had established video conferencing methods, the use of shared online tools and communication methods. However, it was a slightly bigger change for user research, as this meant doing any research contextually or face to face was out of the question. As time went on, Kelly and I adapted our methods and tools for the better. For example, we started off using Google Hangouts as our research tool for conducting moderated usability testing with screen-sharing, but this started to reveal a few problems with devices and the ability to screen share. We decided to switch to Microsoft Teams a month or two on and this proved better, with many of the users we spoke to already having use of Teams during their working hours and therefore were using this anyway at the time of our research. Fast forward to December 2020 and we’ve managed to do over 100 research sessions remotely (usability testing, private beta reflections of the new service and accessibility sessions). I believe from the constant reviewing of tools and we way we have conducted remote sessions has enabled us to get valuable user feedback.
The Registration team also launched our private beta this year (albeit delayed a little due to the pandemic), we were able to release this in April 2020, something I know the team are incredibly proud of. Due to all the hard work of the team this has gone from strength to strength and the launch of the new service has already improved the registration process for its users (both internal and external). To gain insight into users’ experiences, Kelly and I have been doing regular discovery feedback calls and collecting diary study responses from those who have been using the new service. The response and uptake of the new service has been overwhelmingly positive, and even though users face a few hurdles here and there, they are still ‘very satisfied’ with the new registration application and their overall experience of applying with CQC. It gives us confidence that the small changes we make, based on user feedback, will enhance the experience further for when we release the service to a wider audience.
That said, we’ve been also doing a lot of in sprint work, doing research on more complex scenarios (such as registering multiple services/locations or managers at once, or solely registering as a manager). This is putting us in a good position for future releases as we are ensuring the user needs are at the forefront when designing and updating the new service. The team has been working hard to make sure that the future releases will be worthwhile and continue to improve the user experience and is widened to include more people and scenarios.
Towards the second half of the year, accessibility has also been a priority and as mentioned in my previous blog, we had a responsibility to make sure our service is accessible to all, despite not being able to do research how we would normally. To start off with, we did some remote internal accessibility testing with CQC colleagues who volunteered to review the registration application using their assistive technology. We trialled and tested doing these sessions remotely and were very pleased at how these went. The feedback from a range of users with reasonable adjustments or use of assistive technology highlighted some ‘show stoppers’ that we’re focusing on to fix. In the new year, we’ll be doing some more accessibility testing but with external healthcare providers to continue our accessibility work and ensure we capture the needs of our users.
As well as project work, I also feel it’s necessary to give the CQC User Research / Performance Analytics team a shout out too. Jo O'Keefe who manages our team does a fantastic job of creating a community feel and this is evident in our monthly team meetings. Without the support of our fellow team members we wouldn’t be able to do the day job as efficiently and together we’re able to constantly review our practises to ensure we’re up to date with research guidelines and methodologies. It has been great to have that sense of belonging, outside of the project work, and even though our meetings have been fully remote since March, it hasn’t negatively impacted how we work together.
To wrap up, of course it’s been a difficult year and we’ve been met with challenges we would have never anticipated 12 months ago. However, it’s been uplifting to be part of the Registrations team that has really come together to work on something important, despite everything that is going on in individuals’ personal lives. The passion from everyone is evident and I’m very much looking forward to what else we can achieve in 2021.
