About BSPAD
The British Society for Paediatric & Adolescent Dermatology (BSPAD) was founded in 1985 and is a small charity and a special interest group of the British Association of Dermatology. Membership is largely dermatologists and the mission is to provide care, guidance and support for children and young people with skin conditions. They also raise funds to support educational and research activities.
Their previous website was built mostly to cater to their original audience – healthcare professionals – but as they have grown, they required a new website that could meet new demands. The website had not been refreshed in a number of years, so it was clunky on mobile devices and the navigation was confusing, making it hard for users to access the information they needed.
Website project requirements
We Create Digital was originally recommended to BSPAD through an existing client. We were very happy to be considered for the project and were selected by the client after an initial meeting, having understood our experience in the healthcare communications sector and our focus on user-friendly design.
In this meeting, they outlined two clear goals – firstly that the website should cater to their three core audiences: healthcare professionals, parents and young people. Secondly, they wanted the website to be engaging – they wanted to use the feedback from young people to directly influence the direction of the website. It was crucial to them that young people would use the website as a resource or to source information that could support them.
From here, based on this feedback, we developed a full concept design.
Building the healthcare communications website
We first set up an initial scoping call to understand the priorities and direction of the project and confirm the elements that had been discussed, setting clear timelines around the user engagement and the roadmap for the project.
Following this, we ran a user engagement exercise with young people who had experienced dermatological conditions and would be an example of a typical end-user for the website. This involved interviews with users that covered their experience with the existing website, what information they would hope to find on the website and what was important to them about their overall experience of a new or ideal site.
This design was created to be engaging and ensure information was presented clearly, meeting the needs of the core stakeholders, while also having detailed information for their other target audiences. The client was very happy with the initial design and we were able to move forward with only minor changes.
After building out the design and adding their existing content, we made recommendations for areas where new content would be needed, or content should be changed to represent the audience in mind. We also changed the imagery right across the website to represent a more realistic view of what skin conditions look like as this everyday representation was highlighted as being crucial during the user experience testing.
This design was created to be engaging and ensure information was presented clearly, meeting the needs of the core stakeholders, while also having detailed information for their other target audiences. The client was very happy with the initial design and we were able to move forward with only minor changes.
After building out the design and adding their existing content, we made recommendations for areas where new content would be needed, or content should be changed to represent the audience in mind. We also changed the imagery right across the website to represent a more realistic view of what skin conditions look like as this everyday representation was highlighted as being crucial during the user experience testing.
Results following the launch
The new website went live in March 2023 and it has been received positively by the client and wider members of BSPAD.
We also spoke to the young people who were part of the user engagement testing and received the precise feedback that we were looking for, demonstrating we had met the brief.
“The website is really good and approachable for a young person.”
We look forward to helping BSPAD grow and further support their work with families and young people with skin conditions. Professionally it makes us very proud to know our work is contributing to a great cause and helping young people through what can be a challenging time. As BSPAD’s website partner, we continue to provide website hosting and consultancy as required, supporting them in their work.
“Anna and the team at We Create really understood the vision of creating a new website for the British Society for Paediatric and Adolescent Dermatology (bspad.co.uk). We Create have been truly collaborative and incredibly responsive along every step of development of the public facing website involving patients and families struggling with skin problems in the process. The new website has great usability for both health workers, patients and the public and looks fantastic. I cannot recommend the team highly enough.”
President of the BSPAD, Dr Tess McPherson