Creating a secure, accessible digital survey platform for NHS Elect
- Built a new mobile-first Experience Based Design (EBD) survey platform for NHS Elect
- Created a flexible CMS for creating survey templates, touchpoints, questions and reports
- Designed to NHS Service Standard principles, WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility and NHS Design System requirements
The Ambition
NHS Elect supports health and care organisations across the UK with training, organisational development, consultancy and improvement programmes. As part of its Improvement Networks offer, its Experience Based Design work helps NHS organisations understand the experiences of patients, carers and staff, using those insights to improve services.
NHS Elect approached Enigma to design and build a new Experience Based Design survey platform - a secure, accessible and flexible tool to support the creation, distribution, completion and reporting of EBD surveys.
The platform needed to replace an existing tool with a more usable, consistent and scalable digital solution. It also needed to work in real healthcare settings, where surveys may be completed by staff, patients or carers on personal mobiles, NHS tablets, or via QR codes displayed in clinical environments.
Experience Based Design is focused on understanding both the practical and emotional journey people experience when they come into contact with a healthcare service. For NHS Elect, the platform needed to make the survey process easier to manage at scale.
The brief called for a mobile-first survey experience, simple CMS controls, flexible survey templates, multiple question types, QR code distribution, role-based access, CSV exports and automatically generated reports. It also had to meet NHS data governance and accessibility expectations, follow NHS Service Standard best practice, and align with stringent web content accessibility guidelines.
What we did
Creating a new user experience in line with national guidelines
The existing platform delivered the core functionality, but usability and design fell short of modern NHS expectations. Enigma reimagined the experience from the ground up, creating a clean, intuitive and mobile-first interface that works seamlessly across devices. The result is a significantly improved experience for patients, staff and carers, whether completing surveys independently or with support in a clinical setting.
Designing to NHS Service Standards
A critical requirement was alignment with the NHS Service Standard and accessibility guidelines. Enigma designed the platform to support the principles set out within the NHS Service Standard, ensuring the service was built around genuine user needs, clear journeys, accessibility and consistent digital experiences.
Alongside this, the interface and component design drew from the NHS Design System, using established patterns, styles and interaction models to create a familiar and intuitive experience for users. The platform was also developed in line with WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standards.
Where the project required more bespoke functionality, such as emoji-based sentiment responses and custom survey interactions, Enigma applied the same accessibility-first thinking and best practice principles used throughout the NHS ecosystem. This ensured the platform could balance flexibility and innovation with usability, inclusivity and compliance.
Building a flexible survey engine
At the heart of the platform is a powerful and flexible survey creation tool. Building on NHS Elect’s existing “touchpoint” methodology for guiding users through surveys, Enigma developed bespoke software that translated this structure into an intuitive digital experience. The platform allows NHS Elect to map questions to specific stages of a patient or staff journey, making it easier to design surveys that reflect real experiences and pathways. Users can create reusable survey templates, select from multiple response types and tailor surveys for different studies, services or organisations, all within a structured but highly adaptable framework.
Enabling scalable survey distribution
The platform was designed to support large-scale, multi-site studies across the NHS. Surveys can be distributed via direct links or auto-generated QR codes, making them easy to deploy in waiting rooms, wards or staff environments. Multiple surveys can be created from a single template and assigned to different organisations or sites, enabling consistent data collection at scale.
Delivering actionable reporting and insight
Enigma built a reporting system that transforms raw survey data into meaningful insight. Each survey generates an automated, downloadable report with clear visualisations tailored to the question type, alongside CSV exports for deeper analysis. This enables NHS Elect and its partners to quickly identify patterns, understand experiences and take action to improve services.
Creating a scalable platform for future growth
The platform was delivered as a robust MVP within a tight timeframe, with scalability built in from the outset. Enigma has since continued to evolve the platform through additional phases, introducing enhancements such as automated communications, improved data handling and expanded CMS functionality. This ensures NHS Elect can continue to grow its Experience Based Design work and support more organisations over time.
The Results
The new platform gives NHS Elect a more robust, accessible and scalable way to deliver EBD studies across NHS organisations.
It supports the full survey lifecycle, from template creation and campaign launch through to response collection, survey closure and report generation, helping NHS Elect turn patient, carer and staff experiences into actionable insight.
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