Health Pundit
End to End Mobile Application
Fast and easy access to thousands of medical professionals at your fingertips for medical advice when you need it the most
Platform:
Mobile application
Duration:
4 weeks
My Role:
UX/UI Designer, Researcher
Deliverables:
Research, User flow, Prototype, Usability testing
THE CHALLENGE
It has become an increasing challenge to get an appointment with an established primary care doctor let alone a timely response for medical questions. This has been frustrating for many and succumbed them to do their own investigation online which has in turn caused other problems.
THE SOLUTION
Once we identify what users do when they are unable to get medical advice or appointments with their established primary care doctor, we can find ways to provide fast and easy access to healthcare for anyone at anytime.
CREATING THE RESEARCH PLAN
Competitive Analysis
4 companies
Identified 5 top competitors, did a SWOT Analysis and identified gaps and opportunities in the market.
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User Interviews
5 participants
Found 6 participants who use a peer to peer mobile application regularly and are above 21 years of age.
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LET'S DEFINE THE RESEARCH
Research Objectives Defined:
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Understand in which situations do users need medical advice
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Understand the needs of users for seeking medical advice
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Understand what the criterias are for patients when seeking immediate medical care
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Understand if users would be satisfied and validated getting healthcare advice over a virtual application
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Discover opportunities for how patients can get immediate healthcare advice
Assumptions:​
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​We assume that people have a hard time seeking medical advice in a timely manner with their primary care doctors and have found other ways to get immediate answers in need.
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We will be open to learning if these assumptions hold true to real life users.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Identified top 5 competitors in the virtual healthcare industry and performed a SWOT Analysis in order to identify gaps which would turn into opportunities in the market.
AFFINITY MAP
Initial Affinity Map
After creating a ton of post it's with vital pieces of information from the users, i started recognizing patterns and created themes.​
Themes included "appointment wait times, researching a PCP, challenges in finding PCP, importance of health, challenges of doctor visits, challenges of healthcare system, logistics/communication, experience of virtual healthcare, advantages and hesitations of virtual healthcare"
PAIN POINTS & INSIGHTS
Pain Points
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Long wait times for an appointment with your establish primary care doctor is not acceptable as that is inconvenient and more difficult with kids and causes anxiety.
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Long wait times at ER and urgent care which is inconvenient and unnecessary since same day PCP appointments are never available
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Too much research time involved to find a doctor that you can trust and validate across several sites
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Long onboarding process to establish yourself with a new PCP
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Too complex to understand how insurance works and the unknown costs involved each time with a different test, doctor or facility.
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Lack of care and understanding provided to patients
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Reactive approach to care rather than proactive care given to patients to avoid them from falling sick or educating them on how to take care of their health
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Doctors provide limited information and it feels like there needs to be additional research done on the internet or other sources by the patient to be more prepared for the doctor visit.
Insights
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There is a sizable amount of lack of empathy and trust in the healthcare system but a bigger mistrust in the insurance companies hence individuals are always worried about the unknown costs that are involved in getting any type of medical attention.
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Due to the long wait times to get any type of medical advice or attention, individuals succumb to investigating their own disease and avoiding trips to the hospital unless it’s an absolute need.
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Individuals want to be able to reach out to their own trusted primary care doctors via an online portal for quick and easy communication to avoid the overhead of a physical visit when it’s not needed.
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The onus is on the patient who is getting medical help to manage everything including the logistics of insurance, sharing medical documents especially when doctors are not in the same hospital group and lengthy onboarding processes.
USER PERSONAS
Gathering insights from the user interviews and research, i created user personas to represent our target audience for my application, "Health Pundit".
Health is wealth, they say it for a reason. I wish there was a more proactive approach to healthcare.
Getting a same day appointment with any doctor is impossible regardless of whether you have a PCP.
It's hard to be waiting for hours for an appointment when you have 2 kids and you are sick.
BRAINSTORM
How might we
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help users feel confident about getting fast and easy access to a healthcare provider?​
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empower users with alternate ways of including eastern medicine, natural and holistic methods? ​
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empower users with knowledge of overall health and general wellbeing so that they can be proactive about their health?
#1 USER FLOW & TASK FLOW
I created the user flow first to discover the various paths a user could take to search for a healthcare professional.
User Flow #1: How to search for a healthcare professional and book and book an appointment with them?
Then i created a task flow to design the happy path that a user would take to optimize the number of steps.
Task Flow #1: Imagine a scenario where you need to book an appointment for this evening between 4-6pm with a female PCP who speaks "Mandarin" and can prescribe medicines. The reason for your visit is "pain in the left ear after swimming".
#2 USER FLOW & TASK FLOW
User Flow #2: How to learn natural ways of dealing with a particular condition?
Then i created a task flow to design the happy path that a user would take to optimize the number of steps.
Task Flow #2: Imagine a scenario where you have been diagnosed with pre-diabetes so you are looking for natural ways to control and reduce your glucose levels before it turns into diabetes. You are not looking for a general article and want to read other user’s experiences and solutions validated by professionals that they have found.
USER FLOW 1: Lo-fi to Hi-fi Wireframes to Prototype
After completing the user and task flows, I had a much better sense on the ways a user would navigate through the flows. I then used that learning to do the lo-fi wireframe sketches and ideate on the visual design.
User flow #1: How to book an appointment with a PCP based on some criterias?
LO-FI DESIGNS
After doing the lo-fi designs, I designed the hi-fi wireframes using the UI components to bring life to the lo-fi designs!
HI-FI DESIGNS
Home
Filter Screen
Select Language
Select PCP & Time Slot
Review Appointmnet
Confirmed
Get Care tab
I then created prototypes to perform usability testing to find out what's working and not for the users.
1st PROTOTYPE
Key Friction points that impacted the user the most:
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When selecting language, user was confused about the wording, "Chinese (Mandarin)" as they expected it to be "Mandarin".
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After making a language selection, user was unclear if their selection was saved as they had to click on the back button.
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On the "Review" screen, user took a while to understand they had to input a reason before booking appointment as the are did not look like an input box.
FINAL PROTOTYPE
USER FLOW 2: Lo-fi to Hi-fi Wireframes to Prototype
User Flow #2: How to search for a topic posted by others on “reverse pre diabetes” and find the topic that’s most relatable to your situation and reply to the post anonymously with a follow up question.
LO-FI DESIGNS
After doing the lo-fi designs, I designed the hi-fi wireframes using the UI components to bring life to the lo-fi designs!
HI-FI DESIGNS
Community Tab
Searching for a topic
In-depth Post of topic
I then created prototypes to perform usability testing to find out what's working and not for the users.
1st PROTOTYPE
Key Friction points that impacted the user the most and had significant design changes:
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Confusion about which topic to pick from the search results hence word correction was needed to clarify it.
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After clicking on "reply post", the flow wasn't smooth as the text box did not appear immediately below the post but instead after the "Care Advocate" tile which made it confusing.
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User was confused why there were not given an option to post anonymously and realized it after seeing the post that it was sent anonymous.
FINAL PROTOTYPE
USABILITY TEST LEARNINGS
From the usability testing interviews, i identified 17 Friction points and gave each one a priority level and narrowed down to work on those points that were highest priority. Priority to each friction was an accumulation of the level of impact it had on the user keeping the amount of time it would take to implement the change and the number of users who faced this issue.
This project is quite special and close to me as having experienced my own challenges with my health while being pregnant and even as a young adult, i had lost the battle to insurance companies, hospitals and the healthcare system but at my health's expense. Hence, i wanted to create an end to end application which would help others in situations like mine or worse to have the ability to get medical advice and care until they can get to a physical hospital. This product is not intended to replace the hospital system but to help fill that gap of our current healthcare system. It would help with all the restlessness that people go through when they are unable to talk to a professional and succumb to the internet for medical advice.
If i had more time, i would have liked to focus more on:
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how the payment system of this product would work to avoid people having to worry about the unknown costs
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creating a printable PDF that would summarize the user's family and medical history for easy reference whenever they need it
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other features on the roadmap which included getting same hour/day appointments with a medical professional, reducing response time of care advocate.