NHS England hospitals fault reporting solution design
Context
Approach
In November 2021, I was part of an agile, multi-disciplinary team at TPX Impact, we were appointed to guide the Department of Health and Social Care through an Alpha reassessment and into Beta.
Objective: Design a solution to increase faults reported in NHS hospitals.
Hypothesis: The introduction of a fault reporting solution will
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Increase number of faults reported which should result in a better hospital for patients and staff
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Ensure best value from facilities management (FM) companies
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Provide better data on FM work submitted
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Encourage more reporting (cyclical)
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Help assess FM Co performance
Seven areas identified by the original GDS assessment needed more work, and so these were the areas the team and I focused on.
As the user researcher and user experience designer for the project (roles separated in Beta), my focus to was to:
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Map the overarching end-to-end 'as is' fault reporting process
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Collate actionable insights from Stakeholders' about current painpoints, as well as their hopes and fears for the new solution.
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Create a clickable prototype to help visualise the user experience and - in addition - to highlight areas of the solution that may not be classed ‘off the shelf’ or known capabilities already in use in other NHS solutions.
Key to note;
The stakeholders group are broad and deep with a combination of 100+ Trust Facilities Managers(FM), FM suppliers, and FM solution vendors- each with their own perspective and needs.
Technology challenges were not fundamentally complicated but because each fault reported would became ‘an input’ to a FM company application (using a connector or API) however due to the volume of trusts, suppliers and systems, seemingly simple reporting actions needed to be considered for a large number of slightly varying permutations.

Beta required additional user research and service design element during beta, and, that the technology design must be flexible and modular to allow for variability and growth.
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The double diamond design process formed the foundation of all activities and since the project needed to meet GDS standards, key activities I conducted were driven by GDS design principles.
​I focused my efforts on:
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Reviewing feedback on the original Alpha and understanding why it failed
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Learning from GDS service design principles
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Conducting further interviews with stakeholders, trusts (10), Helpdesks and FM providers to understand and compare workflows, reporting practices, data collected, (and technologies used).
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Undertaking questionnaires (initial and additional) with hospital staff about their needs and preferences
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Conducting a retrospective with the DHSC team
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Joining technology workshops with the BSA partner team to understand preferred technology choices and approach
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Reviewing the overall goals in context with our qualitative and quantitative findings to ensure thorough understanding of the needs
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Creation of a clickable prototype and technical prototype.
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Supporting the approach for Beta
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Research
I produced a set of insights and journey maps based on 41 trust staff survey responses, and 10 in-depth interviews - across 4 hospital trusts and 3 FM companies.
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Define
An 'as is' journey map helped to anchor the team and from here - with iterative feedback from the DHSC - an initial 'to be' flow map was produced along with service design blueprints. See the (messy!) working Miro board.
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Design
I produced an initial version of the clickable prototype, using Figma.
As the project progressed into private Beta, additional insights and details, led to a fuller version of the prototype. (I shifted into another project before the project was assessed in Beta but it was successful.)
Outcomes
After a number of working sessions, we underwent underwent GDS assessment. The lead architect presented all technical aspects of the project and I led the research, service and experience design aspects.
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It brings me joy to share that the project is now in flight as a pilot.. A development environment version can be tested here!