Tools

Slack

We use Slack to connect with other people working on digital services across government, we also use it within DDaT to communicate with each other informally.

The NHSBSA Digital Service workspace is open to anyone with an NHSBSA email address and has various channels ranging from foodies to dad jokes!

Microsoft Teams

We are a hybrid organisation and because of that our video conferencing tool of choice is Microsoft Teams. To login, use your NHSBSA email address.

Microsoft Teams is also used to communicate with others from across the entire NHSBSA organisation.

Miro

Miro is our ‘digital whiteboarding’ tool of choice which enables distributed teams to brainstorm and collaborate with each other.

To get an NHSBSA account, contact the Digital Admin Team

Atlassian (JIRA / Confluence)

We use Jira and Confluence to organize and manage our agile projects.

To get an account, you should raise a request with our IT Service Desk.

Resources

Service standards

The service standard is set of 14 criteria which help us create and run good digital services. In addition to the 14 core criteria, the NHS has 3 extra points for health and social care.

These service standards are designed to help teams:

• address the different needs of users
• navigate the complexities of delivering digital services across government and health and social care

Depending on certain criteria, you will often be assessed against the service standard during the lifetime of a service.

Service assessments

A Service Assessment normally takes place towards the end of a project phase e.g.

1. Alpha transitioning into Private Beta
2. Private Beta transitioning into Public Beta
3. Public Beta transitioning into Live.

Your assessment will be run by a panel of experienced specialists from the digital community across various government departments. Panels are normally made up of 4 or 5 assessors, including a lead assessor, a user researcher, a designer and a technical lead. There might also be one or 2 observers, but they will not ask questions.

Service Assessments can often seem daunting, but it’s important to stress that an assessment is a team effort and is not just your responsibility. The panel are not there to catch you out. They’re there to offer a peer review of the work you’ve done and help you understand anything that you can potentially change or improve.

To help project teams prepare for Service Assessments, the NHSBSA has a Service Assessment community which is built up of various disciplines e.g. Delivery Managers, User Researchers, Designers, Developers, Testers etc…

The Service Assessment community not only helps to perform ‘mock’ assessments, but they can also perform ad-hoc reviews against the service standard when requested. These ‘mock’ assessments help project teams prepare for their real assessment by providing advice and guidance in a less formal setting.

Design community

The design community runs every 2 weeks on a Thursday afternoon at 2pm and allows each design discipline (Service Design, Interaction Design and Content Design) to come together to share best practice, discuss challenges and generally just support each other.

To run a session, people can add their topic to an available slot in the design community calendar.

If no session is planned, a session will run for designers to chat informally.

Design Drop-in

Our Design Drop-in sessions were created in October 2024 with the aim of providing a safe learning space for designers to gain more knowledge and skills across the different areas of design. Each session is led by a volunteer who shares their knowledge and experience on a specific topic.

All sessions are optional and any upcoming topics are included within the Design Drop-in calendar.

Design Drop-in is a welcoming space for all our designers, where any questions are encouraged, and support is always available.

Topics that are included within our Design Drop-in sessions include; information about service standards, service assessments and discipline specific topics like code prototypes, blueprints and content standards.

Previously we had Code Club which was created back in 2020 to support designers in developing their code skill for prototyping. Following the rebrand, we hope to include many more designers in learning about our day to day work as an NHS BSA designer, delving into areas like service standards, service assessments and discipline specific topics like code prototypes, blueprints and content standards.

Cross-Gov Slack

Cross-government Slack is a Slack workspace for anyone working in central government, with channels on a range of topics. It’s a place to connect with other people working on digital services across government.

The cross-government Slack was created by the Government Digital Service (GDS) in 2015 as a way for GDS to collaborate with other public sector digital service teams.

There’s tons of reasons to use cross-government Slack. For example:

• networking with other people in similar roles, to share techniques and tools
• finding out about new programmes of work
• learning from other teams on how they approach accessibility
• discussing and sharing examples of applying the GOV.UK / NHS.UK Design Systems to services
• getting help and support using GOV.UK Pay and GOV.UK Notify
• keeping up with what other people are working on in the #weeknotes channel

Design systems

Design systems allow us to make NHS / government services consistent. When something is published to a design system as a style, component or pattern it includes details of how and when it’s been tested in user research. This can help you decide whether it’s something you can use or adapt for your service.

If the journey your user takes begins from GOV.UK, you should use the GOV.UK design system.

If the journey your user takes begins from NHS.UK (or is a NHS service), you should use the NHS.UK design system.

Other government departments have built additional patterns and components within their own design systems to help meet their own user needs.

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Improve the playbook

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