Combining Connect and Manage connection requests
This post is linked to Navigation on the Family Hubs services design history post.
We had two separate services for Connect families to support:
- Connect families to support for local authority (LA) professionals (Connect v11)
- Manage connection requests for voluntary and community sector (VCS) professionals (Manage connection request v5)
We launched the private beta for Connect in March 2023, which allows professionals to search for services. We have been developing the part of the service that allows professionals to send VCS organisations a request to engage with a family to offer support. We were developing this under the service name Manage connection requests with the plan to run it on a separate URL.
Having two starting points creates problems
We mapped out the user flows for the different users and identified some potential problems.
The LA and VCS users were using different start pages that are both under the same URL name: Connect families to support. A VCS user may end up on the Connect families to support LA start page (Connect v11) and assume they are on the correct service because it has the same name and URL. They can still ‘Search for services’ without being logged in and would see ‘Request a connection’ which would confuse VCS users.
LA users and VCS users would both be provided different links for their section of the service. This complicates things as people need to know which link they need based on which type of user they are.
We would also have to signpost users to their service based on their user role and rely on users to share correct links between themselves
Single start page solution
There is now one Connect families to support start page for all users. The start page content explains what the service is, how professionals working with families and young people and VCS professionals can use the service and information about OneLogin. The Start now button takes the user to OneLogin where they create an account or sign in. We brought the login process to the start of the journey so users will only see relevant pages to them, based on their permissions.
Considerations
We considered our approach to move the sign-in to the start of the journey. This means users can no longer use Connect without being signed in, like they were able to previously. The reason for this is everybody that is using this system should have an account anyway, so it should not impact the use of the service.
Combining start pages for Manage family support services and accounts
When we made the changes on Connect families to support, we realised we had the same problem on Manage family support services and accounts where each user (LA user, DfE user and VCS user) had a different start page. We decided to combine the start pages content, so we have one start page for Manage. This simplifies the journey and makes Manage consistent with Connect families to support.