App design for Healthcare Finance Management Association (HFMA)
Overview
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Developing an Internally Facing News App for NHS Professionals
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The Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) is a UK-based charity that sets professional standards for finance staff in healthcare, promoting innovation in financial management and governance.
HFMA approached me to lead the discovery and UX process for a new news app. Given its broad user base and the need to deliver industry-specific information to the right sectors and locations, the project was complex—requiring careful attention to IA, filtering, and personalisation, all while keeping the user experience simple and intuitive.
Some background
Designing a News App for Healthcare Professionals
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For over 70 years, the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) has provided independent support and guidance to its members and the broader healthcare community. However, much of this support had been delivered offline, which wasn’t ideal for the target audience—busy NHS professionals including nurses, consultants, doctors, and directors.
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The goal of the new app was to streamline access to vital resources, enabling healthcare professionals to stay updated with the latest news and meet their CPD requirements—all in a user-friendly, efficient way.
The app was designed to deliver only relevant information, tailored to their specific areas of expertise, and available when they had time to engage.
A key part of the project was ensuring the app felt familiar to users by incorporating the colours, symbols, and terminology they use in their everyday work environments—particularly on the wards. This made the app not just practical, but also consistent with the wider healthcare experience.
Step 1: IA, navigation and location
Developing a Personalised Experience
The app needed to be user-friendly on the front end, but behind the scenes, its content required careful planning. To make the news relevant to each user, it had to be personalised based on their sector, location, and career stage.
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To achieve this, I designed a robust information architecture (IA) that grouped content into familiar categories, which could be easily filtered during setup. Additionally, I included the option for users to refine their preferences in the settings, with helpful, non-intrusive prompts to guide them based on their app usage.
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The setup process was broken into three simple steps to ensure an intuitive user experience:
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Choose your region
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Select your topics
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Pick your networks
This approach made the app both easy to personalise and relevant from the start, ensuring that users received content tailored to their professional needs.
Step 2: Content and filtering
Streamlining Content Management
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After defining the information architecture (IA) and uploading all the news items, the next challenge was ensuring each article was tagged and filtered correctly for display in the app. The user experience of the CMS was just as crucial as the front-end app experience, as content editors needed to easily assign articles to the right categories and ensure they displayed properly across both Android and iOS platforms.
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To maintain consistency with the existing site and reflect the familiar environment NHS staff worked in, I incorporated colour coding inspired by the whiteboards used on hospital wards. This helped ensure a seamless transition between the digital and physical environments, making the app intuitive for users.
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The real key to success was user testing. I ran an open workshop format, encouraging free-flowing discussions rather than structured interviews. This approach led to valuable insights, which I passed on to the design and development teams at HFMA. Along with wireframes, I provided supporting user stories and a content spreadsheet to ensure everything was aligned and easy to manage.
Step 3: Playing the game
Designing a Healthcare News App with Real-World Insights
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HFMA had previously developed a physical board game used during training sessions for hospital staff. The game was designed to simulate resource allocation across departments, with players managing budgets to purchase equipment, beds, and staff. The game utilized colour coding, mirroring the systems doctors and nurses used on their wards.
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To better understand how the game reflected real-life scenarios, I participated in a training session, playing the game with staff while gathering feedback. This allowed me to explore how different types of information were used at various stages of the game and how regional differences affected decision-making.
Drawing from these insights, I applied the findings to the app’s design. I focused on refining filtering, personalizing information, and addressing CPD requirements. These learnings were used to sketch wireframes that ensured the app would meet the real-world needs of healthcare professionals.
Step 4: Wireframes, prototype and design
Interactive News App detail
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To bring the app to life, I created high-fidelity wireframes populated with real news articles and content from the main HFMA website. I then developed an interactive prototype for mobile testing, which covered the full user journey, including navigation, filters, tagging, and the ability to save and share articles.
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After testing and iterating the prototype, I engaged with the design team to refine the visuals. The content within the app was colour-coded to match the familiar systems used in hospital wards, ensuring a consistent experience from the physical 'shop floor' to the digital platform.
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I also crafted detailed user stories for each feature, which I reviewed with HFMA’s external development team, ensuring a seamless handoff for implementation.