A digital platform for the National Institute for Public Health

Floor van Gent

Industrial Designer

UX Researcher

UX Designer

Adobe Creative Suite

Figma

Miro

Redesigning the digital platform of the Healthy School Program from the National Institute for Public Health

Led the discovery and design phases for the RIVM’s Healthy School Program, crafting a digital platform tailored to meet schools' needs in implementing health-focused initiatives and utilizing an online academy for guidance. Through comprehensive research, stakeholder collaboration and iterative design with usability testing, we identified key opportunities, developed wireframes, and delivered technical requirements for development of the tool. Results were presented in a future customer journey map to support the business case for the redesign. Our designs proved to increase customer satisfaction and ease of use by over 25% in the long term.

Challenge

The Healthy School Program (Gezonde School) aimed to enhance its support to schools across the Netherlands by creating a seamless digital platform. The key objective was to translate the needs of schools into the design of an online tool that would serve as a guide for implementing the Healthy School approach and learning through an online Academy. The development of this tool was divided over different projects; discovery, design and implementation. Throughout the development, we needed to integrate insights from multiple stakeholders and collaborate with multiple teams involved in the implementation. My focus was the discovery and design of support for the schools in their journey toward becoming a Healthy School.

Our key questions included:

How can a digital tool enhance service delivery for both the Healthy School approach and the Academy?

What features and functionalities are necessary to make this tool more effective for schools?

What is the technical and financial feasibility of implementing this tool?

Outcome

The final design reflected the schools' and advisors' diverse needs, incorporating functionalities that made it easier to navigate and use the Healthy School Program.

Quick wins were implemented within the first year, achieving a 15% boost in Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and a 20% improvement in Customer Effort Score (CES). These early results highlighted the platform’s enhanced usability and more intuitive guidance.

Long-term improvements, including a new digital environment, were rolled out over three years, yielding an additional 25% increase in CSAT and a 30% improvement in CES.

The Healthy School organization saw these results as foundational to their digital transformation journey, with a lasting impact on program delivery and user experience. RIVM’s feedback underscored the success:

“Essense helped us map out different customer needs and translated them into desired functionalities and designs. Working from a customer journey perspective was not only a good foundation for developing our future digital environment but also for how we think and act within the Healthy School program."

My role

In this project, I collaborated with a UX designer, with my focus being the setup and execution of in-depth user research, including focus groups and market analysis, to ensure the platform met user needs. I was solely responsible for mapping the customer journey based on our findings, transforming insights into feature requests framed as “jobs to be done” for developers. Together with the UX designer, I designed initial wireframes and facilitated usability testing that guided the UX designer in producing low-fidelity designs. My presentations and visuals helped align the organization around a user-centered approach and gain buy-in for our findings.

Approach

1.Empathize:

Conducted desk research and expert interviews to understand the existing platform, user segments, and technical constraints.

Organized focus group interviews segmented by school types and health advisors to uncover user needs, challenges, and goals.

Benchmarked the Healthy School approach against comparable digital tools to understand user expectations and trends.

2. Define:

Synthesized insights from interviews and focus groups into key pain points and opportunities.

Created a future-state journey map for schools and advisors, identifying 13 key opportunities to enhance the user experience.

Highlighted three main themes for improvement: “Help me take the next step,” “Inform and inspire me,” and “Help me create buy-in.”

3. Ideate:

Developed nine wireframes illustrating potential features and solutions, integrating user feedback and technical feasibility considerations.

Facilitated co-creation sessions with stakeholders to refine proposed solutions and align priorities.

4. Prototype:

Built low-fidelity prototypes and validated them through usability testing with 20 users.

Conducted surveys with 300 schools to prioritize the most critical features for immediate development.

5. Enrich:

Gathered additional insights for the platform’s educational aspect (Academy) through targeted research and incorporated these into the design.

Compiled a comprehensive requirements package with prioritized features and usability criteria to guide the development team.

6. Implement:

Facilitated workshops with developers and stakeholders to immerse them in user needs and align on implementation priorities.

Presented results and solutions to decision-makers through storytelling, quotes, and visuals to secure buy-in.

Stayed involved during the development phase to ensure insights were incorporated as planned.

7. Measure and Sustain:

Delivered a platform redesign that improved usability, resulting in a 25% increase in CSAT and a 30% improvement in CES.

Created a roadmap for future enhancements, embedding user-centered design principles into the organization’s strategy.

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Posted Jan 21, 2025

Redesigned the Healthy School platform, enhancing usability with user research, journey mapping, and prototypes, boosting CSAT by 25% and CES by 30%.

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