Rainy Days Health

Introduction

Problem

Scheduling and attending a medical appointment requires time, effort and money from patients. However, when patients don't have much time to spare or access to reliable transportation, these requirements can become too much. As a result of this, many people put off appointments while their symptoms grow worse, leading to poor health outcomes.

Solution

There are several categories of people who would prefer a visit from a provider at their home to traveling to an appointment at a clinic or office, such as parents of young children, people who rely on public transportation, and people who require frequent medical appointments. The business’s goal is to provide access to convenient healthcare for this portion of the population.

Research

Competitive Analysis

For my competitive analysis, I decided to research not just At Home care companies, but also a Telehealth and an Urgent Care company. These products/services all cater to similar needs and demographics, and all have applicable lessons.

User Interviews

I interviewed five participants to get a feel for patient pain points in the medical industry. They fell into these demographic categories, which I hypothesized would be in the target market for this product.
• 2 senior citizens
• 1 busy young professional without a car
• 1 person with a chronic illness
• 1 mother of young children
I sat down with each interviewee, either in-person or over Zoom, and we talked about all their experiences with the healthcare system. I asked about all their experiences, and then tried to zero in on general pain points and opportunities.

Time pressure

The majority of interviewees feel negatively affected by the time pressure of medical appointments

60% were hesitant to make medical appointments, and will postpone or skip appointments that are not convenient

60% dislike how far medical appointments book out, and wish for more immediate care

60% cited needing to take time off work to travel to a medical appointment as a barrier to receiving medical care

research

80% of interviewees mentioned spending time researching providers and clinics before appointments. The most common elements they sought out were:

Good communication with the provider, able to get updates about appointments and results

Billing transparency, knowing if insurance is accepted and how much it will cover

Effectiveness and efficiency, like ending the visit with a prescription or other action plan

Define

User Persona

Since I had interviewed such a variety of demographics who could find a use for at home care, I created three different personas to represent them. Josh, the young professional who relies on public transport, cares the most about not missing work. Ashley, who has young children, would love the ability to not have to disturb her children's rest when they become sick and require a strep throat test. Betty, the senior citizen, requires many appointments and has trouble with transportation under certain conditions.

Goals

I created a Venn Diagram to map out the goals of the users, business, and the technical goals, as well as their overlap. Although the needs of the users are paramount, it's important to create a project that is practical, future-proof, and fruitful.

User Flow

With the desires of the patient in mind, I mapped out the user flow. With this product, the patient interactions are mostly based around following a sequential set of steps — first to create a profile, then to request a visit.

Site Map

I conducted a card sort with 5 participants in my target market. The card sort involved 40 cards sorted into 6 set categories. With the results of this activity, I was able to create a site map. The main decision point here was where to place the appointment detail screen so that patients could access it easily outside of the visit creation flow.

Ideate

Mid-Fidelity Wireframes

I created mid-fidelity wireframes, mostly focused on having a clear journey through the two main flows: creating a profile and requesting a visit. I wanted the journey to creating a visit to be navigated easily.

Branding

Name and Logo

I was searching for an idea that evoked the idea of staying at home, to communicate the main added feature of the product over its competitors. I landed on "Rainy Days." On a rainy day, a person is more likely to stay at home, due to external forces — just as a person might stay at home with an illness. The idea of a rainy day also led me to the logo concept — an umbrella, the object that shields and protects people from the rain.

I created the logo in many different dimensions, to make sure that it would work at whatever size was required by the screen. I also wanted to make sure it looked good at a large scale, but was still readable at a small scale.

Colors

After doing research on similar products, it became clear that the most common colors for medical apps and websites were blue and white. These colors imply calmness and trustworthiness, which were impressions I wanted future users to have. It also was connected with the name Rainy Days, since water is perceived as blue.

Instead of having a secondary color that contrasted sharply with the primary palette, I chose a different tone of blue, for a monochromatic color palette that highlighted the simplicity and clean design of the app.

Font

My main goal in font choice was readability. I wanted to use a simple, no-frills font with a large x-height, so that the text could easily be read even at a smaller size. This decision was made to cater to the senior citizen population of the target market group, but is also a general best-practice for accessibility. It also added to the general clean design of the app.

Design

I put together all the elements to create the final design. I wanted to make sure this app came across as straightforward and polished-looking, since the purpose of the product is very practical.

Test

Usability Tests

Using my functional Figma prototype, I conducted moderated usability tests with five participants. Their goal was to walk through both the account registration and visit request flows. I noted what areas were pain points, and they shared with me their general feedback about the product.

Signup Flow

Users found the signup flow to be easy and straightforward, completing it in a few seconds with no misclicks from anyone. There was some feedback about the landing page that started the flow, but almost none about the flow itself.

Visit request Flow

Users were able to navigate the flow with little confusion in under a minute. The screen that elicited the most comments was the patient page — most users didn't know that they needed to click the box with the default user. One filled out the dependent fields, thinking that was mandatory.

Priority Iterations

emergency information

On this screen, I added a message with instructions about what patients should do in case of an emergency. This was my highest priority due to the potential emergency situations or liability issues that would arise with a real-world implementation of this product.

primary user vs dependent

I made two changes on this screen:
• I changed the user profile to be automatically selected, to save users a click if they were following the most common path
• I changed the "register a dependent" option from H3 to H4 to be lower on the page's hierarchy, so it clearly reads as a secondary option

Conclusion

The overall feedback I received about the design was that it was clear and easy to follow. Participants also said that colors looked professional and that it looked like other medical apps they had used in the past.

I was happy to hear that, since clarity, simplicity and professionalism had been my biggest goals going into the project. I wanted to create something that could provide a service for a wide variety of people, including those without much technical knowledge.

Prototype