Challenge & constraints

The challenge of this design sprint was to reimagine the future of the white label patient experience without technical constraints and create a north star vision. I used a fictitious company called Online Care for the app name and logo. No design system was in place yet, so there was opportunity to define a new imagery style.

Given the limited time, we pushed back on redesigning the entire experience and identified which area would benefit most from improvement.

Discovering opportunities in patient journey map 

My team and I created a journey map about a patient looking for an appointment with a therapist to talk through her anxiety issues.

• We decided that improving guidance to care was most impactful because it would help patients find the right provider with ease.

• Additionally, we saw an opportunity to create an experience that allowed patients to preview the guidance to care journey before asking them to sign up or log in. In prior user interviews, many patients expressed the desire to preview the app before signing up.

Evaluating pain points within guidance to care

Through interviews conducted by research, I learned that browsing for the right provider was complicated due to the unintuitive navigation from browsing services, practices, to providers and the limited search feature functionality. 

Analytics showed that the homepage drop-off percentage was higher than the average drop-off percentage. This suggested that the loss of patient engagement could be explained by a frustrating experience of browsing for care.

Brainstorming ideas to improve unintuitive navigation in guidance to care

The main takeaway from the original experience was that patients did not have a clear mental model of services and practices and the relationship between them. I wanted to remove this expectation and allow patients to focus on their reason for visit as the driving force to finding care.

We mapped out the following improvements:

• Supportive Guidance

  • Patients new to the app could interact with a chat bot* to find the right providers.

    *Since the redesign was not limited to technical constraints, the chat bot idea had to be later validated by product and engineering. 

• Browse and Discover

  • Patients familiar with the app could search for specific terms or browse categories to find the right providers.

I focused my efforts on improving the browse and discover concept, while my teammates focused on the supportive guidance concept.

Defining ideal functionality for browse and discover concept

• A robust search function would allow patients to search by user-friendly terms about health concerns, categories of care, or providers by name.

• Popular search terms would help patients get started and auto-complete results would decrease search time. 

• User-friendly browse categories such as health categories, concerns, symptoms, etc, would act as filters that link to providers on the back-end. This would allow for better matching between patients and providers.

Conducting competitor research for browse and discover concept

I conducted competitor research to leverage the latest trends of the telehealth space and consumer mobile apps to find inspiration.

Wireframing process for browse and discover concept

I created 3 iterations that used an exposed search input field at the top, but explored different layouts of the browse categories.

• Entry point to search
  In the original experience, a search icon was used in the top corner, but most patients did not see it. Therefore, I exposed the input field so that patients could easily view and interact with it.

• Browse categories
  In the original experience, there was a complex hierarchy between services, practices, and provider options and nested levels of navigation. Therefore, I simplified the browsing options to user-friendly categories that would link to provider options.

  After conducting user testing, I ultimately chose iteration 2 because it showed the most visually engaging way of browsing categories and clearest hierarchy.

Exploring imagery styles for browse and discover concept

The visuals in the original white label patient app felt dated and needed a modern update.

I explored 4 trends - photography, flat illustration, iconography, and glassmorphism. After gathering feedback from my team, we moved forward with using iconography as the MVP approach and flat illustration as the future, ideal approach.

Results

The final design concepts simplified the guidance to care journey by allowing patients to browse by their health concerns and needs.