What our users need
Our users need to:
- know who to contact to get more information about a trust
- make sure information goes to the right person, especially if it’s sensitive
- check if the trust is the right one
- include contact details of trusts in forms that they complete
- contact specific roles for compliance reasons, for example Chair, CEO, CFO
Their pain points include:
- contact details not up to date and contacting the wrong person
- contact details missing and not knowing where else to get them
- having to get in touch with other people in the trust or department to find the latest information
How the design evolved
Prototype 1 - contact details at the top of every page
Users skipped past this content and didn’t know where to find it.
Prototype 2 - place at top of trust details page using the ‘grey box’ component
The grey box stood out enough to help more users find contact details.
However, we wanted to use the grey box component elsewhere to highlight summary level statistics or information.
Prototype 3 - contact details in a table
We tried displaying contact details in a table, in the same way as the rest of the information on the trust details page.
We used the headings ‘internal’ and ‘external’ to be consistent with other products.
We also included contact details for external people on the governance page.
This was a better experience compared to TRAMS, where users had to click through to another page to access contact details.
However, we wanted to see if there was a quicker way for users to find the information.
Current design
We gave contact details its own page underneath ‘About the trust’.
This means:
- all the contact details are in one place
- other important contact details can be added in future
Users also told us that they normally refer to school and trust contacts as just that, not external contacts.
That’s why we changed the labels to ‘DfE’ and ‘Trust’ contacts.
Next steps
We will continue to monitor the page in beta and make improvements as needed.