Faster access to healthcare facilities — Findoctor
Accessing healthcare services in your immediate vicinity has always been a challenging job, particularly when you are new to a place. This was a freelance project in which a hybrid app was designed for a startup aiming at providing faster and feasible healthcare services. As a user experience designer, I conducted research and incorporated it in the design of the health-care service app.
Understanding the problem
This hybrid app was designed for a startup based in Bhubaneshwar who aimed at providing door to door healthcare service for their customers. There was a brief discussion with the team members of the startup and me where we discussed in order to better understand the needs, business goals and what problems they were trying to solve from the organization’s point of view. The initial idea was that the app should show people, the doctors available nearest to them booking an appointment for treatment/checkup. After subsequent discussions, there were revisions and an updated idea was finalized.
Research for better understanding
The project started with conducting user research to get a deeper understanding of the user’s needs and desires. Getting insights about the user helped to move forward with the design process
- Survey
A survey was conducted using SurveyMonkey and was distributed among a varied audience to collect quantitative data regarding the project was essential to gather generalized information about the users.
- User Interview
I conducted a user interview with two separate users: a working professional and a housewife who were assumed to have similar problems in their daily life. Having a conversation about them with these problems and listening to the user stories helped me understand the problems better and their usual approach of finding a solution to the problem.
Empathizing the Users
Understanding the user is crucial for a user-centric approach. Analyzing the data gained from the user research, the potential target customers were identified. Diving deeper into the insights gained from potential users helped better understand the problems they were facing. The major problems that they were facing were:
- Difficulty in finding a specialized doctor when a person is new to a town/city.
- Too busy to book an appointment and visit the doctor within stipulated times in a day.
- Transporting the patient is a difficult task especially when he/she is an elderly person or suffering from any disease such as Alzheimer's, paralysis, etc.
User Personas
Personas were made representing the different user groups, taking into consideration the insights gained, user expectations, and frustrations.
The Usual Approach
From the insights gained from the user interview, the user journey was prepared to demonstrate the usual approach of a user to book an appointment with the doctor for medical reasons in order to better understand the opportunities. Taking into account the customer journey for the period between the person getting ill and recovering, it was divided into broadly into three parts — Exploration, Consultation, and Purchase.
Brainstorming Features
With the user persona in mind along with company needs and user desires, I figured out a set of solutions to ease out the user pain points. After a set of discussions with the team members of the startup, there were subsequent revisions and later a set of features were finalized. The features were:
- Map view to show the nearest available doctor.
- Option to book appointment based on personal preference or randomly(based on rating and selected specialization)
- No booking in case of an emergency condition.
User Flow
Based on the features and in order to provide a better user experience, expected user flow was generated assuming the possible user behavior with the app.
Information Architecture
The information architecture was made showcasing the flow of content through the app. It demonstrated how various pages were connected with each other in the app.
Sketching the solutions
Solutions were sketched to putting in all the planned out features and prioritizing them. Sketches were discussed with the team to put in their ideas for holistic development. Multiple iterations were made to find out the best possible layout that would be fit before performing the user testing.
Style Guide
The color and font were chosen in a manner to create a visual balance in the user interface for the app. The primary color chosen was Medium Sea Green as the color symbolizes nurture and health. Poppins was chosen as the typeface for headings due to comparably more x-height and well-kerned characters. Raleway was chosen for body text because of its well-spaced characters.
Mockups
after finalizing the sketches, high fidelity mockups were made in Adobe XD following the design system that was decided earlier. The mockups followed a consistent and coherent design pattern to preserve a visual harmony.
Prototypes
The prototype was made using the high fidelity mockups. The prototype was used for testing it with the user to gain feedback and for improving upon the product.
User Testing
User Testing was conducted to find out usability issues in the interface of the app. This was done by following methods such as Think out Aloud and Task Analysis. The majority of the users could easily perform the assigned tasks and found the interface friendly. There were a few minor changes in the interface owing to the usability of the app.
Future Scope
Being a medical based app, Findoctor handles how to explore clinics, doctors, and booking appointments in an efficient way and these were the requirements of the company. Other than that, if there’s a need to expand, our suggestion would be to take it to the next level. This app can further cater to order medicines online from various trusted pharmaceutical companies and medical stores. Along with the listed clinics, there can be pharmacies as well which can turn this app into a complete health-care app.
