A woman and her baby are typing on a laptop

Helping parents register the birth of their baby

Content design for the registrars at Leeds City Council in 2020.

The brief

The registrars at Leeds City Council had to stop all appointments when the pandemic hit. This meant that thousands of new parents in Leeds were unable to register the births of their babies.

When the central government gave the okay to resume birth registrations, the registrars needed a way to handle the huge backlog of appointment bookings and enquiries.

Context

Before COVID-19, people could not book registrar appointments online, only by phone.
Legally, births can only be registered in person – we couldn't build a fully online service.
The contact centre was already inundated with calls from eager parents, so we knew the demand would be high.
The project team included a service designer, a user researcher, and a variety of stakeholders from the registrars and contact centre.

Challenges

There was a backlog of 4,000 births that needed registering.
We had 5 weeks until launch.
The online booking form had already been purchased from a third party.
We had limited ability to make changes to the form.
There was no budget for any other digital solution, such as text alerts.
We were unable to do usability testing – only basic PEN and UAT testing.
We had to ensure people knew the COVID-19 safety rules at their appointment.

What we did

We spent the first sprint gathering customer research, creating UX maps of the various routes, evaluating the form, and weighing up all the options we had for tackling the issue.

A milo board showing the process of registering a birth

The image shows the map of the pre-COVID journey, current journey, phone booking journey, and potential online journey.

We concluded that, even though the form was a poorly built product, it was still the best option we had. From then on, a big part of my job was to mitigate any stumbling points the form could cause for customers. This meant there was a lot of pressure on the web content that introduced the form.

We also wanted to ensure that every part of the journey was smooth, not just the online form. We had to plan and consider emails, phone menus, call centre scripts, and what was going to happen at the appointment itself.

What I did

Reviewed the booking form for show-stopping pain points and crucial changes.
Created plain English web content to prepare people before they went into the booking form.
Created ‘What to expect at your appointment’ plain English web content.
Edited the confirmation email to include important safety information.
Reworded the phone menu to ensure it was clearer and in line with the content.
Met with call centre staff to talk them through the phone booking process and how to inform customers of appointment safety information.
Made recommendations for on-site poster information at the register office.

While we were unable to do proper usability testing, the content I created still went through full peer review, multiple prototype iterations and a thorough sign-off process with the subject matter experts.

Web content about what happens at a birth registration appointment. This image is linked to full web page.

The image shows a web page explaining what will happen at a birth registration appointment. To see more, visit the live page for Register a birth: your appointment.

The image shows a list of safety rules people must follow at their birth registration appointment. This image is linked to the live webpage.

The image shows a list of safety rules people must follow at their birth registration appointment. To see more, visit the live page for Register a birth: your appointment.

The result

We took a burden off the phones and started a steady flow of self-serve appointments.

After 2 months:

3,732 appointments were booked online (79% of appointments)
the unregistered births backlog was reduced to 2000
we saved the council an estimated £12,691.72