Context
Currently, the way that the nearest placement school is communicated when candidates search by city or region can be confusing.
“x miles from [city or region]” could suggest that the distance is measured from the boundary of the city or region, rather than its centre.
It is unclear where in Cornwall the distance to the placement school is measured from.
Pain points
Candidates may not understand what point the distance to the placement school is measured from. This is particularly unclear when searching by a large region such as Cornwall or a city such as Manchester.
User need
As a candidate, I need to understand where the distance to the nearest placement school is measured from, so that I can understand how far away it could be.
What we did
We initially explored whether we could display the exact location used to calculate the distance for a city or region search, such as the first part of the postcode.
This would require an additional API call, adding cost and complexity to the search results.
We therefore explored a simpler content change. For city and region searches, we made it clear that the distance is measured from the centre of the location.
In our initial designs, we also removed the ‘Nearest placement school’ label to simplify the information shown in the search results.
Adding “the centre of” makes the point used to calculate the distance clearer.
During testing, some participants struggled to understand whether the distance related to the provider, study site or placement school.
We added “Nearest placement school” back into the final design to make it clear what the distance refers to.
The way we communicate distance for town and postcode searches will stay the same.
During testing, participants found the location information useful when assessing courses.
There was still some ambiguity as to what the centre of a city or region referred to. However, due to technical constraints, we cannot display the exact location used to calculate the distance.
Next steps
We will be building these changes into the service and will consider any feedback about how distance information is displayed in search results.