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 duration: 3 Months

The 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.

The Goal

The objective is to enable users to schedule visits with a doctor of their preference. The application will facilitate users to secure an appointment with an available doctor so the patient can address their more urgent medical needs.

My role

Lead UX Designer

My Responsibilities

Research, wire framing, design, prototyping

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

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 booked 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	See a doctor while on the road.
	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 to communicate with VA doctors about his pain medication. He needs to review and refill his prescriptions through this application. Alberto has had difficulty finding quality doctors at the VA, so he wants to be able to schedule appointments with reliable doctors a few days in advance to prepare.
	"I need a doctor who understands what we're dealing with to review my medications.”

Doctor Personas

I created doctor personas for their views, but for the sake of this case study tge goal was to solve the problem for the users.

Discovery

Usability Problems

Our customers and their patients appreciate our simple "See a Doctor Now" feature. However, it currently feels like an ER visit, offering no choice of doctor. To make the experience more patient-friendly and to honor our commitment to our clinic customers, we've decided to add a scheduling component. The challenge lies in determining which calendaring system to use, and how to ensure it is as user-friendly and straightforward as our "See a Doctor Now" feature.

Accessibility Issues

Our See a Doctor Now user experience was streamlined, yet did not have adequate accessibility built in. The left side navigation was a problem.

User flows are known and comparatively simple.

The user steps from application download to final report were only 10 steps. This was considered excellent.

Research: Scheduling systems for Patients

We interviewed third-party schedule component vendors. However, integrating their solutions would be complicated, time-consuming, and expensive.

And we researched how these competitive scheduling systems suited our needs.

Since the existing solutions didn't solve our problem, we decided to create our own.

Competitive Review

Competition (Aligned): Doctor on Demand

Recurring visits: My evaluation of Doctor on Demand showed that locating and scheduling a doctor can be a tedious process. The service provides numerous options, including an extensive 8-step onboarding process.

Competition (Unaligned): Hipmunk

Unaligned Learnings:

I gleaned some extremely valuable lessons from this unaligned competitor, whose market greatly differed greatly from ours. The Hipmunk scheduling process bore a striking resemblance to scheduling a doctor's appointment.

Like the airlines the primary and secondary considerations could flip for the cost conscious.

Scheduling User Flow

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

Calendar design exploration

Early calendar design exploration revealed the complexity of managing hundreds of long term doctor schedules.

3-step search process - similar to Hipmunk

1. Search Doctor type
2. Choose Doctor
3. Book Appointment

Physician Specialty groups requested two-month availability schedule for each specialist. We designed and tested this request. Here is what we learned:

• Not many patients were looking to book a specialist at this time.
• None of the services we worked with offered specialists.
• Our customers wanted to offer clinic type services to their patients.
• Patients wanted to see a doctor in less than three days.
• Patients saw telemedicine as a "fallback" to an office visit.

Patients and Doctor flows

We discussed our findings and evaluated the technical impact of various flows over several design sessions. We 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.

Final User Flows

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
• Pain Point: Appointments must be booked and there is no on-call service
• Pain Point: They require a large user base as they work for multiple services
• Pain point: Research: Diminishing completion: Patients miss online appointments that are more than a few days away

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

Clinic customers were not focused on specialists. Therefore, the issues around booking specialists provided less near-term value. General practitioner appointments provided more regular appointments.

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

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.

©2024 Thomas Hallgren