Introduction

PROBLEM

Patients want to be more proactive and organized when it comes to their health appointments, but they don’t have the time or energy to manually keep up with inconvenient scheduling and scattered documents.

BUSINESS GOAL

Increase the amount of appointments made.

PRODUCT GOAL

Make the experience of scheduling, managing and tracking health appointments quick and straightforward.

SOLUTION

A patient portal that allows patients to proactively manage their health appointments through one central portal.

ROLE

Product Designer

Go to Final Design

Process

How Might We?

how might we make scheduling appointments less intimidating so that patients feel more confident about taking care of their health?

how might we make reviewing health appointments feel as intuitive and straightforward as reviewing a bank account?

how might we make the amount of paperwork or information involved in appointments more digestible?

how might we make doctor notes readily available to patients after an appointment?

how might we allow patients to communicate with their clinics directly on their own time?

Competitive Analysis

PATIENT PORTALS

While the patient portals available cover many features that patients need, they are often overly complex and difficult to navigate and digest. They also overwhelm the user with crowded layouts that have little hierarchy.

HEALTH DOCUMENTATION APPS

Documentation apps primarily focus on recording notes during the appointment, which all needs to be done manually by the patient.

CLINIC SIDE

Clinic-side portals keep doctor notes and scheduling, but patients don’t have access.

User Survey

USER DEMOGRAPHIC

Users should be a wide range of ages, genders and races to ensure representation.
People who currently schedule their own health appointments.

RESEARCH GOALS

Understand how people currently feel about their health and how much they know about their health.
Identify what process patients are using to plan, make and review their health appointments.
Understand what emotions patients currently feel about planning and attending health appointments.
Examine existing methods or technologies patients are using to collect and organize their health information.
Identify challenges, barriers or emotions that patients have throughout the process of their appointment.

TOOLS

Google Forms

* Questions below are selected for the case study and are not shown in order

User Survey: Results

THE NUMBERS

The survey results gave us an understanding of the users' perspective on health appointments, how they felt about collecting and organizing documents, and their challenges when it comes to the process.

User Survey: Insights

PROBLEM STATEMENT

PAIN POINTS

Patients find calling clinics to schedule, change or cancel an appointment to be inconvenient and cumbersome.
Patients want to streamline their health documents but their documents are usually scattered.
Patients find it mentally taxing to record concise information during the appointment.
Patients find it difficult to track their payments and insurance coverage.
Patients don’t feel secure storing their health information in scattered formats.
Patients want to visualize their health stats in a digestible format.

Affinity Mapping

Based on what participants mentioned throughout the survey that included their needs, pain points, and preferences.

Solution

PatientChart is a web app for patients to proactively manage their health appointments through one central portal through scheduling, doctor notes, billing, and direct communication to their clinic.

OVERVIEW

Patients need all their health appointment related tasks convenient and accessible.
Clinics will have the ability to share messages, doctor’s notes, schedules, and documents.

LIMITATIONS

Must be responsive for all platforms
Will only be accessible to patients with clinics using PatientChart
Accessibility standards are top of mind for a wide, health-focused customer audience

Primary Features

PATIENT + CLINIC NEEDS

Schedule a new appointment

Change or cancel
appointments

Review past appointment notes and documents

Appointment reminders

Visualize health
statistics

Pay and track
billing statements

Upload and organize documents

Review past history and immunizations

Message center connected to clinic

Wireframes + User Flow

SCHEDULING AN APPOINTMENT

The initial round of designs were focused on how a user would go about scheduling an appointment starting from the dashboard. The wireframe process consisted of blocking out content that would be on each page and then drafting mid-fidelity wireframes for the user flow.

OVERVIEW

Restaurant owners need it to be customizable to their brand while still being simple to edit. Customers need it to be accessible and intuitive to navigate.

High-Fidelity Designs

PATIENT DASHBOARD

The dashboard is the first screen a patient sees when they login. They can view their next appointment, look back on previous appointments, or schedule a new appointment. They can also see an overview of their messages, billing status, and clinic information.

View Prototype

User Flow: Scheduling an Appointment

In order to schedule an appointment, the patient goes through the process below:

Type of Appointment
Clinic Information
Availability
Patient Details
Review

Appointments & Billing Pages

From the "Appointments" page, patients can get a comprehensive overview of their appointment including doctors notes, relevant documents, recorded vitals, and any referrals made. Patients can also review their billing statements and make payments through the "Billing" tab.

User Testing

LOOKBACK.IO

Using Lookback.io, users were recorded using the prototype following a scenario that they were a patient who wanted to make an appointment. We were able to see how users interacted with the prototype and how they approached scheduling an appointment. For example, in this round of user testing we found that users generally used the same process of clicking the "Schedule an Appointment" button from the dashboard as opposed to going to the Appointments tab first.

User Testing Takeaways

Users needed more differentiation for task buttons vs. regular buttons

Main task buttons were edited to a larger size and included iconography in order to stand out among other tasks.

Users wanted more information on the confirmation page

Users wanted to see a confirmation page that allowed them to save it to their calendar in addition to relaying the information again.

Users appreciated confirmations throughout the process

Users commented on how knowing which step they were on in the process made them more confident.

Design Library

BUILT IN FIGMA

PatientChart was built on a 4pt grid system to keep designs flexible and consistent across the platform.

Conclusion

KEY TAKEAWAY

My main takeaway is the importance of flexibility throughout the process. As the user data collected grew, the solution to the problem changed as well. This mindset meant we went back to the initial research each time we iterated in order to keep the intention of the designs consistent.

Learning Point: Task Hierarchy and Organizing Information

One of the main challenges during the process was organizing data. Because of the amount of information that a patient needs on their dashboard, I iterated multiple different layouts during the wireframing process. Through user testing and research on similar data applications, we were able to improve overall data visualization and organization.

Cindy Q. Nguyen

Cindy Q. Nguyen

Restaurant owners need it to be customizable to their brand while still being simple to edit. Customers need it to be accessible and intuitive to navigate.

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