Re-designing the user platform across the country

In the Colombian healthcare system, the timely allocation of appointments will always be the major barrier between service provision and users. Through its new web portal, National Clinics aims to improve the digital appointment scheduling process, alleviating congestion on phone lines and user dissatisfaction. Additionally, they seek to enhance the information architecture to provide a better tool for the users.

• Role: Product Designer

• Collaborators: Product Manager, Engineering, QA.

• Company: National Clinics / Steward

• Timeline: May 2020

The problem

After understanding the appointment allocation metrics through the existing portal and the traditional channel (phone call), we found opportunities as well as valuable information to consider for the creation of this new proposal.

• How can we guide the user, making them feel accompanied throughout the process?

• How can we provide more information about the services?

• How do we optimize the experience for mobile devices (as more than 57% of the users access the web portal through mobile)?"

Research

To ensure that the proposal was meeting the users' needs, we executed various research methodologies that allowed us to approach the real pain points they were experiencing.

• Surveys: 60 segmented surveys were conducted in 3 stages (20 surveys in each stage).

  1. Phase I: Expectations of the new web portal.

  2. Phase II: Validation of architecture and proposed new functionalities.

  3. Phase III: Satisfaction and approval of the new proposal.

• Testing: Two on-site moderated tests were conducted.

  1. Initial: 5-minute tests to validate the navigation and structure proposed in the initial wireframes. These tests were performed by 5 users while they were waiting in the queue to be attended.

  2. Pre-launch: Users were asked to perform a specific task with the final interface. Once again, 5 users participated in this test, which revealed errors, opportunities, and task execution times that were used for the final refinement.

The results were effective as they helped validate existing hypotheses and identify opportunities for improvement.

• User Personas: Based on the knowledge gathered from the research, we determined that there are two target personas for our product.

  1. Ms. Carmen: A single mother with very long working hours, resulting in a lack of time to schedule appointments for herself and her children over the phone. She has a smartphone that she only uses for calls and basic messaging. Her limited availability during business hours and complex interfaces prevent her from adequately managing the health care of her family.

  2. Mr. Luis: An older man who became widowed a couple of years ago. He never had children, and his family lives in other cities. He is retired and frequently visits the doctor, but always has to wait for long periods on the phone line, only to be assigned an appointment for a month later. He does not lead a healthy lifestyle as he spends most of his time at home watching television.

The result

After months of prototyping, testing, and iterations, we reached the final delivery of the project. With the new design, our goal was to provide users with the ability to schedule their appointments easily and offer more detailed information about the services. Additionally:

• Reduce the call center traffic in 72%.

• Create a fast and clear flow.

• Give users more control over their appointments, increasing the opportunity rate in 46%.

Today, users are changing the way they schedule appointments without the need to contact the call center. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that they are navigating well in the new flow, enjoying the ability to access more information, and achieving the desired results.

• Pillar pages

  Modular design aimed at easy reproduction of new content. Atomic structure that adapts to all devices.

• Information architecture

  We structured 200 links in a way that the flow of information could evolve, thus achieving better SEO positioning.

• Product across devices

  More than 50% of the usual page traffic comes from mobile devices, so it was vital that the platform was fully responsive to cater to users accessing through their devices.

• Design system

  Development of essential patterns to be applied and replicated across different pages of the site.

• Optimize performance

  The content and images are optimized, enabling navigation with minimum loading speeds.