Case Study - eHealth

Challenge: Discover pain points of available health & wellness app on the market and propose solutions with eHealth app to improve user experience.

Delieverables: Strategy. User research report. Persona. Task flows. Sketches. UI. Prototype.

Role: UX Designer

eHealth is an online platform for a complete health and wellness managing services.

Challenge

The challenge is to understand potential eHealth users’ response to the current health managing app in the market, discover pain points and propose a solution to improve their experiences.

Process

For the initial user research, I conducted user survey and interview to understand the current problems. During the synthesize phase, I used affinity mapping to analyze pain points and determine priorities. Then I generated task flows to understand where the users were having trouble, created Lo-Fi sketches and Hi-Fi clickable prototypes. At the end, I was able to validate with users and confirm that the pain points are solved with current design. The project timeline is 2 months. Now let’s go deeper into each step.

RESEARCH

User Surverys & Interviews

To uncover potential user’s needs, goals, and pain points while using relevant health and wellness managing app, I first conducted surveys to identify competitor apps, what keeps the users’ positive mindset towards competitor apps, and lastly the target audience of eHealth.

7 out of 10 people said they use services or apps to keep track of their health goals and medical information
8 out of 10 people said they set up short-term goals to see progress
9 out of 10 people said they lack motivation to keep up with daily exercise and health goals.

I then conducted interviews to identify users’ behavior towards health/wellness related apps. I spoke with 3 potential users to uncover pain points and the selected users are reasonably close to the target market of eHealth.

SYNTHESIZE

Affinity Map

I synthesized my findings under 6 categories based on the main business functions of eHealth- get inspired to keep up with managing health and wellness. The findings from my research were then organized on an affinity map to better understand their relationship to each other and do determine priorities moving forward in the process.

Based on the study, here are the 5 problems I decided to focus on:

Challenge presents trying to connect with provider’s office (long wait, automated messages etc.)
Difficult to remember to make appointment with busy schedule
Difficult to remember to continue with daily health routine with busy schedule
Challenge to quickly locate needed information on medical related app
Difficult to log back into the app due to complicated password requirements or overly complicated security setting

User Needs

To be reminded to schedule a medical appointment with provider
To have a strategy and incentive to work-out
To be able to connect and share successful achievements

User Goals

To visit doctor's office on regular basis
To check-mark all of daily work-out or wellenss goals
To explore and learn from other people's health and wellbeing tips

Hypothesis

eHealth user needs a fun and practical way to be reminded to schedule an appointment because with current working climate, regular check-up with the doctor is easily neglected. With eHealth’s ‘Set Reminder’ function and other fun activities and wellness goal and community, user will constantly be aware of scheduling an appointment.

We will know this to be true when more than 70% of the user testers agree that it was easy for them to set reminder and the other features made it a fun experience leading to an appointment set-up.

I created user flow for steps a user will typically go through to complete two common tasks in eHealth:
‍

User wants to schedule an appointment
User wants to add a wellness goal

Lo-Fi Sketches

Based on the established pain points, I sketched multiple options to test and see which design will optimize the user experience. During the design process, I continued referring to the target audience, eHealth’s mission, revenue model and my goal to focus on how to improve the user experience rather than just simply making design changes. After a few rounds of iterations, I came to a good place with the solutions.

THE SOLUTION

Straght-Forward

Onboarding

Concise and succint onboarding screen to deliever crucial information to the users.
Easy to log-in with biometric ID.
Extra security to ensurer user's personal data is protected.

fast information

home

important information is easily accessible.
Fun illustration and icon representation.
Personalized welcome and warm design.

SCHEDULE

aPPOINTMENT

Easily schedule an appointment with selected provider. User won't have to call in anymore.
Track routine procedures and set reminder to be notified to schedule next appointment.
Personalize reminder date for flexibility.

daily-routine

Wellness goals and progress

Stay motivated to accomplish daily goals.
Personalize wellness activities by customization.
Track and analyze daily, weekly, and monthly progress.

INFORMATIVE, motivating, and EXPANDING

COMMUNITY

Expand and share knowledge by sharing acheivements.
Practical incentive with point system and rewards voucher.
Personalized profile.

VALIDATE

Conclusion

After two months of user research, analysis and design, I was able to validate the assumptions and implementations I had made. I did this by testing my clickable prototype with 6 participants through guerilla usability testing. The results are:

Scheduling an appointment: 6 out of 6 users found it easy to schedule an appointment through the app.
Set reminder for next appointment: 6 out of 6 users found it helpful to set reminder for next appointment.
Practice daily wellness goals: 5 out of 6 users found themselves motivated to practice daily goals.
Quickly locate information: 6 out of 6 users found it easy to locate information quickly.
Able to log back in: 5 out of 6 felt comfortable logging back in.

Notes: For future studies, I would like to spend more time collecting data on how often users schedule an appointment to see their provider and how connecting through community will motivate users to keep using the app. Also, how this business model can be successful in the market.

Thoughts and Takeaway

This case study has been a challenging and rewarding experience for me. At the beginning, I was overwhelmed by the idea of gathering interviewees out of thin air for the usability testing. However, it turned out to be an amazing experience to understand and learn from the user’s perspective and find out what makes user’s experience so much better.

Although this is not a real-life project, I am glad to learn that my attempt at finding problems with apps on the market and providing solutions can yield big impacts and create a great experience for users. It is so important to always validate our assumptions through testing.