01. project description
A patient-centred solution designed to empower patients as experts in their healthcare
This project was conducted as part of the project requirement for a Design Thinking course. Alongside two other classmates, we worked with PFAs (Patient Family Advisors) who were spokesmen of patients at the St Joseph hospitals but also, had themselves been patients before. I was responsible for designing the web interface and testing.
02. project info
Role
UI Design, User Testing, User Interviews, Research
Timeline
October 2022 - November 2022
Team
Christopher Leroux,
Vincent Magcalas
03. the challenge
Patients wanted to feel like experts in their healthcare but did not feel like a part of their healthcare journey.
The current healthcare system is challenging for most patients particularly those undergoing a medical procedure or health challenge. Speaking to patients, they highlighted some current challenges they had experienced in the past with healthcare which has caused a lack of trust in the healthcare. From the interviews, here are some of the challenges we discovered patients have with the current health care system:
04. the goal
Re-imagine the patient health learning experience going through a knee replacement surgery
The goal was to brainstorm ideas and design solutions that could help patients be more knowledgeable about their care when going through a surgery.
05. the solution
My health is a web platform providing users with information relating to their health conditions so that they are well-informed every step of the way and can help manage anxiety of the unknown while preparing for surgery. The features include:
06. hear their stories
We sort out to get an in-depth understanding of the current end-to-end user experience with the healthcare system in Canada, the services and health tools available to them. We interviewed a total of 7 users and eventually narrowed down to 3 major users whose pain points we were trying to solve for.
06.1. key points from user interviews
We spoke to a total of 7 patients. Here are some of the key insights gotten from 3 of the patients. We organised the information using Empathy Map.
07. insights
After speaking to patients, we synthesised the information gathered and categorised them using themes to help dig deeper into the identified challenges.
08. market research
Defining our target audience
Dovetale is a secure online portal for patients from which they can manage information related to their health and access medical records. It is a portal developed by St Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton. Most of the patients we spoke were already using this for managing their health information but felt the application could be doing more for them. Hence, I did a heuristic evaluation of the system to identify gaps and opportunity areas for our solution. Conducted a heuristic evaluation of the website specifically in terms of aesthetic and design, functionality for patients, help and documentation, and navigation. Also analyzed its strengths and weaknesses.
09. create phase
Defining the problem
Having spoken to some patients, to get into more specifics and further identify the need space based off our interviews, we defined two personas considering both the mainstream users and extreme users.
I am my most vulnerable in the hospital and I need my care team to speak to me in a way that I understand. I should not be made to feel stupid
Age: 35; Location:Canada; Status: Married; Language: Hindi;
Esther is a 39years old woman with a long history of medical conditions. She moves locations often so she has different Physicians. She recently had stroke which has affected her memory. Due to this, she sometimes forgets what the doctor mentioned during her last visit and sometimes forgets the medication dose. To help with this, she sometimes writes down her questions but during the after care, the doctors speak to her in medical terminologies and after the appointment, she goes home with no report from the hospital as to what was dicussed inn the appointment. She also has no way of keeping all her physicians in the loop which causes misinformation.
I am my most vulnerable in the hospital and I need my care team to speak to me in a way that I understand. I should not be made to feel stupid
Age: 49; Location:Canada; Status: Married; Language: English;
Katherine is a vibrant woman who was involved in an accident few years ago that made her lose vision in both eyes. Ever since then, Katherine has had to rely on digital devices and assistive technology to help her carry on with her life without little or no limitations. She recently injured her knee and has been going to the hospital for check-up with a knee replacement surgery due in a few months time.
hearthe information in her health record.
10. problem statement
We wanted to ensure that in designing a solution and creating a meaningful experience for users, the design solution could serve as many people as possible without excluding certain user groups from experiencing our solution. To do this, we accounted for the case of extreme users interacting with our solution. What design decisions could we make to make their experience the same as that of our mainstream users?
Our extreme users include:
tech savvy: users who do not like to use digital technologies due the perceived complication around the use thereof
11. ideate
To help brainstorm ideas, we turned the POVs from the define stage into HMW statements and branched off ideas using the HMW questions.
11.1 brainstorming
After brainstorming ideas around the HMWs, we came up with three possible ideas for consideration. The ideas are:
11.2 ideas selected & decisions
We decided to go with Idea 1: the MyHealth app for the following reasons:
12. storyboards
To help drive the design direction and highlight the various touch points in the user experience, we used storyboards as a form of prototyping and visualising what the new experience might look like
14. PROTOTYPES - Round 1
Patient Onboarding
Onboarding Screen: serves to give users an understanding of what the web application is
Preferences Onboarding Screen: serves to accommodate selected preferences patients might need, including those related to languages and enables the screen texts to be read out to
Dashboard
Home/Dashboard: this is the first landing page for patients which shows the most recent activities on their accounts, their prescriptions, recent doctor visits, attached notes, and a calendar to preview their appointments at a glanceers an understanding of what the web application is
Doctor’s notes
Doctor’s Notes: on selecting a doctor’s notes from the table of notes above (see the picture before), a user can view the detailed doctor’s notes from a visit. The doctor’s note includes information discussed during the patient’s visit, medications prescribed, and a comment section for patients to drop questions that might have after going through the notes they could not ask during the earlier visit.
15. PROTOTYPE ITERATIONS
We tested the first round of prototypes with Sahar and Debra. The feedback and insight gotten from the testing round required improvements to be made to the UI of the Doctor’s notes to make for a more meaningful experience for patients. The new insight that informed the new design is:
2 IMPROVEMENTS WERE MADE TO THE DOCTOR’S NOTES FEATURE
After:After the new insights we discovered, we redesigned the Current Medication section to be more detailed and presented the medication in form of a calendar with more visuals and use of plain, easy language to help patients understand what is to be done with each medication and what the medication looks like.
17. USER TESTING
We tested the second round of prototypes again to seek feedback and validation
Some of the feedback received and suggestions include:
17. FINAL PROTOTYPE
Improved Doctor’s notes
Doctor’s notes: After the new insights we discovered, we redesigned the doctor’s notes page to include a customisable surgery information guide that helps patients understand what happens during a typical surgery, in this case, knee replacement surgery, and the next steps after their procedure.
Pre-surgery guide
Pre-surgery guide: This guide helps patients be expert about their health; particularly when they have an upcoming surgery. This guide aims to detail to the patient what typically happens during the surgery. That way, patients understand fully well what happens going into surgery.
The guide employ the use of objects as an alternative representation of body part so patients aren’t terrified with the visual representation of the guide. The guide can be further improved by detailing how Doctors prepare for a patient’s surgery; to further instil a sense of trust between the patient and the care team.
AR Interactive Wayfinder
This serves as a hospital indoor map using real scenarios and pictures of the hospital layout to help patients find their way around the hospital, especially on the day of their surgery appointment and even regular visits. This is an approach to helping patients feel more in control. Moreso, the hospital should not feel like a maze to patients as this will only make already anxious patients even more anxious. The highlighted blue area shows the path to walk through, the flashing arrow uides users marking out walk path, turning directions, and doors/elevators to go through.
The highlighted blue area shows the path to walk through, the flashing arrow uides users marking out walk path, turning directions, and doors/elevators to go through.
18. DESIGN SPEAKING PRESENTATIONS
Here’s some feedback from the usability testing with Sahar
19. DID I WIN SOMETHING?
From testing with Sahar, I learned that seeking out feedback early was immensely helpful in helping to decide if we were on the right path and more importantly if we were designing a meaningful experience for patients by addressing a concern.
In interviewing and iterating through prototypes, I learned that being data driven is necessary in making creative decisions and producing a viable solution. Consequently, a designer should always be open to iterate through several prototype to get to the final deliverable.
Interviewing patients that have used the existing solutions helped provide a better understanding of the barriers they have faced so far, what positives and negatives they have seen, and tools that they feel are missing or under-utilised.
