The Challenge:

A large healthcare system had an app that was developed before their website had been optimized for mobile. The app had been getting some negative reviews in the app stores to back that up. It was a website in an app wrapper that wasn’t mobile first and the team wanted to change that.  

The Solution:

V2 would simplify the experience of patient populations within the health system. It would remove the pain of wading through unnecessary information by focusing on a tight set of features that were most used by patients.

My Role:

My role was to create a strategy for trimming down the app from its first version, conduct user research to validate assumptions, and create UI for a clickable prototype. I led a cross-team strategy session and guerilla style usability testing to accomplish these goals.

Tools Used:

Whiteboards, Post-its, Personas, Online Questionnaire, User Interviews, Adobe CC (UI), MobileSmith (Prototype)

 

Discovery & Design

To assess where we currently stood in the market, I researched competitor mobile apps. I wanted to see what features were being used, what types of user reviews these apps were receiving and what pitfalls we might be able to avoid. Also, I wanted to explore the areas that we may be able to improve upon.

 
 

I led a strategy session to brainstorm and prioritize functionality and feature sets. This session was grounded with two years worth of contextual quantitative user data.

After our session, I created a questionnaire for our technology focused patient advisory council to help confirm that our internal assumptions aligned with patient needs.

Once we validated those basic assumptions, I interviewed patients to create personas and empathy maps. With factual personas to structure our experience around we could refer to them throughout the rest of the project.

Patient personas, user journey, and empathy maps:

 
 

At this point in the design process, I always prefer to start with some sketching and wireframing. This helps me to think through the flow, structure, and hierarchy of an experience.

 
 

For this project I used pencil, paper, and whiteboards to create low-fidelity wireframes. Then, I used Adobe CC to create UI for a high-fidelity prototype. I used MobileSmith, a iterative prototyping tool, to create a 50% functioning version of the app.

 

Guerilla testing

Based on our proximity to the hospitals, all we needed to do was walk outside to be surrounded by qualified users. With the prototype in hand - myself, a content strategist, and a social strategist hit the streets to talk to real patients about the app. It didn't hurt that we had bags of swag to give away. 

We asked that they:

  • Think out loud as they explored.

  • Give us a home screen narrative.

  • Asked for 3 specific tasks and then observed.

 

Key Learnings

  • Sometimes you just have to get out of the building. You always need to talk to real people and put a prototype in their hands.

  • Building tight feedback loops into your process is particularly important to the end product.

  • After validating our original assumptions with user research, and getting a prototype in the hands of patients, we were able to make recommendations on a go forward strategy.