NHS Direct has arrived on the mobile platform and unfortunately if you’re looking at it from a cold critical perspective the initial version looks like a great idea which has been poorly executed and thought out.
Initial responses to my own Social Media App from users and from Apple focused on criticism of it being too much like a mobile website and the NHS Direct app seems to be not a lot more than that. It’s the NHS Direct Website bundled in a mobile wrapper so currently you could just as easily be looking at the web version through your mobile browser and I’m surprised it made it through the approval process unscathed in this iteration.
Unlike the NHS Drinks Tracker, the design and layout don’t appear to have been conceived from a mobile users perspective – the approach seems to have come from a web design view and it looks like a website rather than an App. Worringly, the Contact Us feature doesn’t have the NHS Direct Phone Number visible on screen (just a button to press to get an alert up) – begging the question has anyone actually thought this through from a usability perspective?
Also, as with most apps in their first version it’s slow to load and chock full of bugs on the version I tested on iPhone (computer bugs not thankfully the nasty variety) – as an example Bites and Stings errored out and froze the App when one of the Next buttons was used and this won’t work unless you turn your phone on and off again.
Critics might also see this as another buffer zone inbetween actually managing to get to see a doctor at your surgery and do they really expect older users to be able to use it effectively? If you’ve ever been in some surgeries in the UK some of the older patients are unable to work out how to use the touchscreen technology to book in for an appointment (so where are the considerations for them in this new mobile world?)
The Android press release states that users have been involved prior to the launch of the app which is nice to see but I wonder whether anyone was asked from a mobile technology viewpoint and my heart sank when I tried it out as I really wanted it to be a great piece of software.
However, sadly this looks like a rush job that would have benefited from a few more months in development. The most interesting place to check in the near future will be the comments section of the iPhone reviews (which seems to have more negative than positive comments at time of writing)….
