My role

Lead UX Product Designer

My Responsibilities

• User Research
• Competition analysis
• Scheduling research
• Wire frame desing
• Architecture for cross-platform
• Lo-fi design
• Prototyping
• Illustration
• Hi-fi design
• Flow diagraming
• Native & responsive web app alignment

• Advocate for user-patients, ease of use & accessibility.

*As stated in Apple's Human Interface Guidelines: "The best apps are intuitive and direct, letting people complete tasks without instruction."

Project Overview

Virtumedix is a cross-platform virtual medicine product. It's suitable for clinics, insurance companies, pharmaceutical trials, pharmacies, and institutions. In my role as the UX/UI Design Lead, I collaborated with the product manager, project manager, and engineering team leads.

Project timeframe: Executed over 3 months, wile working on many other features and fixes.

The Problem

Problem

Hospitals and clinics needed a scheduling feature so patients could have doctor choice and to prepare and be ready for their calls in advance.

Our "See a Doctor" feature connects patients with available general practitioners immediately, similar to an emergency room visit. As we add scheduling and specialist options, we must preserve this simplicity while expanding functionality. The challenge is maintaining our streamlined user experience while introducing more scheduling choices, while increasing accessibility.

Understanding the user

• User research

• Personas

• Problem statements

User research

User research: Summary

To gain a deeper understanding of user needs, I interviewed individuals who scheduled doctor appointments within the past six months either for themselves, or someone they care for.

User research pain points discoveries

Personas

Persona 1	Adult male wants a second opinion regarding the medication he is taking.
	Age: 34, Eduction: Trades, Home town: Irvine, CA, Family: Married w/ 3 children, Occupation: Construction
Problem statement	William, a busy construction worker, receives medication from his doctor. However, after a coworker shares a negative experience with the same medication, he becomes uncertain. Now, he wants to get a second opinion to put his mind at ease.
	"One of the guys I work with said the medication I take caused problems. I want to get a second opinion after work."

	Mother wants appointment for her son’s ear infection.
	Age: 32, Eduction: Bachelor, Home town: Tustin, CA, Family: Married w/ 2 children, Occupation: County worker
Problem statement	Susan, a busy mother who works part-time, struggles to schedule and keep appointments due to her shifting work hours. Her son's ear infection is worsening, and she needs to consult a doctor soon. Although her pediatrician suggested visiting a clinic, Susan knows which medication her son needs. She plans to book an appointment with a pediatrician in two hours, once they return from the aquarium.
	"I know what my son needs, I just need to see a pediatrician when we get home in two hours."

Persona 2	Schedule a time the following morning.
	Age: 58, Eduction: Highschool, Home town: Texas City, TX, Family: Married w/ 2 grown children, Occupation: Truck Driver
Problem statement	Bill, an active truck driver, is frequently on the road and is experiencing recurring back issues. If his condition deteriorates by tomorrow, he anticipates needing a new prescription. Therefore, he plans to schedule a doctor's appointment for the following morning when he returns home. This allows him to fill the prescription at his local pharmacy.
	"I need want to see a doctor from home when I get home tomorrow morning.”

Persona 4	Seeing impaired retired veteran wants to see doctor.
	Age: 36, Eduction: Highschool, Home town: Tustin, CA, Family: Single, Occupation: Disabled retired
Problem statement	Alberto, a visually impaired veteran, requires an accessible application, with assistance, to communicate with VA doctors about his pain medication. He also refills his prescriptions through this application. Alberto has difficulty getting to the VA and wants to schedule appointments a few days in advance to prepare.
	"I need a reliable doctor to review my medications when I have assistance at my home.”

Key learnings

1. URGENCY: Most patients sought same-day or next-day appointments for urgent medical needs like medications, injuries, or illnesses.
2. RELIABILITY: More distant appointments increased chances of cancellation or being missed.

Long term scheduling research

We researched long-term and recurring specialist scheduling needs.

Key findings:

• Limited specialist availability
• Customers came for basic clinic services + some speciality referral requests
• Patients needed appointments within 1-3 days
• Telemedicine served as backup to office visits

We discussed our findings and evaluated the technical impact of various flows over several design sessions and agreed to a solution that keeps the current “See a Doctor” flow intact, while offering “Schedule an Appointment” as an easy to access additional feature. Separating them also allowed us to measure use.

Current 10-Step user flow

From download to final report, users completed their task in a notably efficient (10-Steps) process.

• We developed user flows based on feedback from our clinic and pharmaceutical research customers.

Competition Analysis

Aligned: Doctor on Demand

Recurring visits: My analysis of Doctor on Demand revealed a cumbersome doctor scheduling process. The service offers many options but requires users to complete an extensive 8-step onboarding process.

Available 3rd party scheduling services

Meetings with third-party scheduling component vendors:

Competing systems focused on complex physician calendaring.

Concerns

• Bloated features
• Day/Week/Month/Year views
• Flexible recurring appointments
• Time-consuming to integrate
• Solved physician group complexity - not necessary
• Not intended for patients
• High cost add-on

Determinations

• Do not schedule doctors, ingest current doctor schedules via API.
• Help patients schedule an appointment in the next 3 days.
• Our Clinics and their Patients focused on near-immediacy over long term recurring visits.

Unaligned Competition Discovery: Hipmunk

Learning:

This focused airline scheduling solution aligned with booking doctor appointments.

Scheduling an Appointment Design Exploration

• Exploring calendar design views for patients.

Sketches

Design style & Information organization

Design Testing

Proposed 3 Appointment Starting Points:

1. Date

2. Specialty

3. Doctor

Minimized 5-Step user flows

The post-its represent the 5-Step simplified flow

Each time slot had predefined appointment windows to consider.

New 5-Step Scheduled Visit User Flow

With a Hipmunk-like flow, booking a doctor was extremely efficient.

Scheduling Buffer Time

We considered whether to explain the technical minimum scheduling lead-time to patients booking specialist appointments.

Detail: To prevent scheduling conflicts while maintaining quick booking options, we implemented a 30-minute buffer between booking and appointment times. Rather than explaining this constraint explicitly, we simply displayed only the available time slots that met these requirements.

This approach aligned with Apple's Interface Guidelines.

Documenting User Flows for Engineering

I drew the user flows for the new scheduling feature in GREEN over the flow of existing features. The “Appointments” feature is now to the right of “See a Doctor Now”

The scheduling component embodies these features:

1. Appointments
• Scheduling an appointment
• Upcoming appointments (with reminders)

All other features are consistent with the existing application.

Learnings:

Specialists

High-value and in-demand by patients, yet:

• Most patients had a speicialist already and wanted second opinion or when their office visit specialist was unavailable.

GPs (General Practitioners)

Available on call and according to regular schedules

• Patients generally prefer to see them soon
• Patients have shown interest in seeing a GP within less than 3 days

Conclusion

Most specialists in each system also covered GP duties.

Patients using Telemedicine used our service for second opinions and for question when their specialist was unavailable.

Wireframes and Mockups

I initially created wireframes to establish the flow before transitioning to the final mockups. During the wireframe phase, it became clear that the patient navigation on the left side was not accessible.

Final Mockup Designs

Both problems solved:

1. Easy Scheduling: The final design made it quick and painless to find an schedule GP or Specialist less than three days.
2. Accessibility: New navigation was introduced up top. Previously it floated to the left.

High Fidelity Prototype Testing

We conducted tests of the final prototype with users who were unfamiliar with the application. My user testing flow:

Test User responses were largely positive

• All of users accomplished tasks easily.
• All users commented positively on the ease of use.
• All users expressed their willingness to use the application to booking a doctor.

Prototype testing

Testing one participant before, and after a bicycle accident.

User testing was positive and here are some of the quotes

“This is very easy to use.”

“I like that I can find a specialist and see them so quickly.”

“Sometimes I need to get my child to see a doctor right away, and I see now I can book a follow with the same doctor. That’s great!”

Final Hi-Fi Comps

Here are some cross-platform views of the final interface

Physician Calendar Web Views - Appointments & On-call schedule

Physician On Call Status

Outcomes and learnings

Booking a specialist appointment is now easy for patients using Virtumedix. A task that required numerous clicks on our competitors' apps now only takes six to ten clicks on our platform. Moreover, narrowing our focus advanced the release date by several months. Patients across different age groups found it straightforward to book and consult a doctor.

Business outcomes: An external business review rated Virtumedix as the industry leader for user-friendliness and efficiency in scheduling doctor appointments. Following the final version of our scheduling system, six new clinics adopted white-label versions of our system within the next eight months.

©2025 Thomas Hallgren