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research/2026-06-24-multiple-branches-usability-testing-findings-june-2026.md

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+# Multiple branches usability testing June 2026
+
+## 2026-06-16 / Sprint 5 (Q1)
+
+## Aims
+- To understand how usable the design is.
+- To find out whether a longer or more complex form might present additional challenges.
+- To uncover any challenges the design might present for users who have cognitive or neurodivergent conditions.
+
+Can people easily: 
+- Add routes
+- Edit routes
+- Reorder questions and understand the impact
+- Fix routes that have issues
+- Understand what routing is in place in a form
+- Navigate, use and understand a long routes page
+
+## Participants
+- 8 civil servants
+- Current users of GOV.UK Forms
+- Intention: A range of experience of the platform and using routing
+- Actual: More beginners than experienced users
+
+- 4 **had** a declared a cognitive or neurodivergent condition
+- 4 had **not** declared a cognitive or neurodivergent condition
+
+## Methodology
+- Usability tests with form creators.
+- 60 minute sessions.
+
+## Key Headlines 
+
+### Adding the questions
+
+- People work from a range of formats when creating their forms
+- Half of people set up the question wrongly. Most commonly, they set up the list question to accept one or more options.
+
+### Finding where to add routes
+
+More than half of participants struggled to find where or how to add routes. They:
+- couldn’t find the ‘Edit question routes’ button
+- didn't read the content on the empty routes page that said they needed to add more questions
+- didn't understand why their options were not shown on the routes page (when they'd set the question up to accept more than one option)
+
+When searching for how to add routes, people often went to the Edit question link.
+They would usually focus on the options area of the edit question page, or go into editing the options.
+
+### Adding routes
+
+Once on the Edit routes page, if the questions were set up correctly, they understood how it worked. They generally used the dropdowns to change the options quite easily.
+
+However, people commented on the amount of stuff on the page making it more difficult, especially text and numbers.
+
+### The length of the form
+
+Most people did not seem to find the longer form more difficult to use.
+
+### Reordering questions and editing / fixing routes
+
+Those who did the task understood what they needed to do when they saw the error for the backwards route.
+
+Again, the amount of numbers and text on the page made the task more difficult.
+
+### Understand what routing is in place in a form
+
+Those who used the route descriptions seemed able to understand them with a bit of focus.
+
+There seemed to be potentially a challenge when how the route is written in the original form is structured differently to the platform.
+
+### Using the keyboard to navigate (one participant)
+
+They were the only person who seemed very nervous about making mistakes.
+
+They were keen to be able to edit the routes for just one question at a time.
+
+Their main limitation was scrolling the page while also using the keyboard to interact with the page.
+
+### Impact for people with neurodivergent conditions
+
+Due to the interaction of other characteristics (experience level and job role), it was challenging to identify the causes of the behaviour of people with conditions.
+
+In some aspects, people with conditions had a better experience and in some areas it was worse, but this was also associated with their experience level, and whether or not they were a content designer.
+
+People with conditions were almost exclusively the people talking about the amount and presentation of the information on the ‘Edit question routes’ page.
+
+## Supporting Evidence
+- [Report](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/17oKU8GmFwv581oZGF-01JmcLt_LdqmLIV8RQvS7ba3c/edit?usp=drive_link)
+- [Playback](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I7C3MKqUhObp0V_t0IWFStDqlnCc6KEk/view?usp=drive_link)
+- [Further documentation](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13U0idGiOdwr9PlnCD-oSuRk4I39ng1Qj)