Selecting Morning, Afternoon, Evening Appts

Hi Steven,

I was about to write to the team to request exactly the same changes that Debbie has asked for when I noticed her post.

When a patient wants an appointment they usually have a preference in mind e.g. Thursday between 2pm & 4pm. When they see the three options of Morning, Afternoon and Evening, their first response is to hit the Afternoon button, which deselects it. Why do they have to deselect the days that they don't want rather than select the days they they do want???

Their alternative is to go the Appointment Search window which is "greyed" out, and therefore not obvious. Once again, they have to deselect days that they don't want in order to find days that they do want. All of this is completely counterintuitive and very clunky.

While I'm sure you do "know of thousands of bookings being made online without any issue", what you can't possibly know is how many bookings are being missed by patients simply giving up on using the portal because of it's counterintuitive layout.

Hopefully this issue gets more than a glance.

Kind regards,
Rob

Hi Rob

I'm not sure if I entirely agree with you in regards to this functionality being counter-intuitive. We have chosen to give users' appointment options for the full day when visiting this page; hence it was thought the Morning, Afternoon and Evening buttons should be highlighted. Normal behaviour when clicking a button in a group with more than one option is for the buttons to toggle on and off as they do.

In considering this suggestion, we have decided that none of the buttons should be highlighted when the page first opens, though still displaying available appointments on the day.  The buttons will then act as 'radio buttons'.  That is when you click one, the others will de-highlighted, if you click the highlighted button, they will all de-highlight and we will display appointments for the full day. What we will lose is being able to select two buttons at the same time such as Morning and Afternoon.

Our team has to make literally hundreds of functionality decisions, which we almost always get right (smile). Thank you for the feedback.

Don't be surprised if another group of patients, hopeful smaller, don't understand the new interface.

This suggestion has been changed to 'planned'.

Tony

I kind of agree with Rob's comments on this one.  But for me the issue isn't that all the buttons are selected on opening, it is that you can't tell that all the buttons are selected because the buttons don't look the same as the other buttons on the interface i.e. when selected it is the border changes colour rather than the whole button. 

So even though all the buttons are selected on landing at the page, it is not immediately obvious that they are selected.  I think having a radio button in each of the options would help or maybe four buttons are required -  an "anytime" or "all day" (selected on opening) then Morning, Afternoon & Evening for those that want to filter down.  

Travis you raise a good point. We will definitely be making the indicator that the Morning, Afternoon and Evening buttons are active more obvious.

Thank you
Tony