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THE CHALLENGE

Our client had a very basic booking system and wanted a more robust design and user flow. They wanted to give their patients more control over the booking process, add more booking features, & provide patients with better information about their pending visit.

 

 

APPROACH & KEY INSIGHTS

We carried out extensive competitive and comparative analyses, informal user interviews and iterated over many usability studies which revealed that patients value:

 

• Scannable content so that the key appointment information can be consumed at a glance

 

• Clearly worded instructions with no possibility for misinterpretation.

 

• Icons and maps are desirable

 

• All important information at their fingertips & that their attention drops dramatically when there is a break in the flow of information.

 

Our findings also influenced business strategy explained in the Learnings section below.

THE SOLUTION

We designed all user flows, content and wireframes of the online urgent care booking system starting from the moment a patient submits their information to book an appointment to follow-up emails and surveys sent to the patient.

 

CONTEXT & CHALLENGES

Patients can have up to a three hour wait time for a walk-in urgent care appointment. Our client aims to improve the patient experience by allowing patients to book their appointment online and waiting at home instead of the clinic's waiting room. 

 

Our client needed assistance thinking through and creating a booking widget user flow and designing the appointment confirmation message that was informational, easy to use and allows their patients full control over managing their own bookings.

 

Our client’s business objectives were to

  • become the friendly go-to urgent care booking platform

  • make their clinics happy

  • promote brand recognition

 

Design constraints specified by our client include

  • Inclusion of a QR code and a confirmation code displayed on the appointment confirmation

  • Exclusion of an intermediate review screen prior to the booking confirmation

 

Armed with these guidelines and requirements, we started our research.

DISCOVER

We performed competitive and comparative reviews with nine different booking platforms and conducted informal interviews.

 

Questions we were interested in include

  • What information is perceived to be the most valuable to the person booking the service? 

  • Do users want feedback about the personal information they used to register?

  • Is it safe to assume they know they need to bring their ID and health insurance information?

  • Do patients want their appointment recorded to their calendar even if the appointment is only an hour from the time of booking?

  • How much appointment information do people want?

  • How much location information do people want? Maps?

  • What is the patient’s comfort level with being redirected to a 3rd party booking platform without being told (URL does not match the clinic site)?

COMPETITIVE & COMPARATIVE REVIEW

We analyzed the booking user flow, confirmation messages and emails of 9 different booking platforms. We evaluated them based on simplicity, completeness of information, tone, flexibility for the user as well as content flow.  

INFORMAL INTERVIEWS

We approached individuals to find out what kind of information they expect and want to see on an appointment booking confirmation. We asked them if they had particularly memorable (positive or negative) experiences. 

SYNTHESIS

From our informal interviews and comparative & competitive analysis, our findings include:

 

  • Make content highly scannable

  • Icons were common and users liked them

  • The vast majority of the booking confirmations had appointment information, name, and location of the place of appointment.

  • Maps are well-received, the bigger the better

  • Arrange information into distinct chunks to reduce cognitive load

  • Scan-ability of the information is key

 

We used these findings as guidelines for our design.

IDEATION & ITERATION

We wanted to account for the overall User Experience from the moment the booking took place to the follow-up email and survey the patient might receive.

 

We dove into the ideation process whiteboarding the widget user flows and ideating what the user might see every step along the way. We made a few sketches and moved into task-based paper prototyping.

 

User flows and booking confirmation elements:

  • Edit patient information and/or appointment date/time

  • Add appointment to calendar

  • Add a secondary (additional) appointments

  • Cancel appointment

  • Forward appointment to another email or phone number (e.g. spouse)

  • Add patient insurance information

  • Print appointment confirmation

 

We brainstormed various layouts of the above elements important to the patient while keeping the clinic and our client’s goals in mind. Then we performed usability tests.

  • Were users able to complete the task?

  • Did they understand what the humble edit pencil would do or did we need to write it out?

  • How did they feel about the map size and placement

  • If we gave them a large map, would they see the information below the map?

  • We were interested in understanding how having a relatively unknown third-party booking platform impacted user confidence. Would they abandon the booking process if they could not identify the booking platform company?

 

Learnings from our usability tests include:

  • Instructions must be very clearly worded, especially if the patient doing the booking is in a sub-optimal emotional state.

  • Use of icons to help chunk material and allows for easier scan-ability & friendlier feel.

  • Icons sometimes aren’t enough; some must be thoroughly explained further with text.

  • Users really like maps, the bigger the better. However, users mentally “check out” if there are breaks created by the map in the information flow. We were able to solve this problem by making the map tiny to force the user to click on the map to bring them to their map app. 

 

We continued to redesign and test until we elicited the desired user behavior.

 

We also ideated and created all modals and pages that went with each user flow.

IDEATION & SKETCHING

We ideated key features and sketched how they might be displayed. 

USABILITY TESTING

We performed a dozen usability tests which was when the majority of user issues were addressed, such as content, layout, flow, or terminology challenges.

ITERATION

Six iterations of usability testing were performed. Each iteration had the goal of addressing additional user concerns and guiding user behavior.

SOLUTION & DELIVERABLES

Solution

We made design decisions based on the iterative usability testing performed. Please see the annotated wireframe below for details. 

 

Our deliverables included

  • User Flows

  • Mid-fidelity annotated wireframes for:

    • All variations of confirmation messages (e.g. initial confirmation, edits to patient or appointment information, cancellations, etc.)

    • Confirmation messages in responsive mobile, tablet and desktop platforms

    • Email wireframes for all confirmation messages

    • Standardized printout wireframes

    • All Intermediate modules, pages, confirmations wireframes related to the user flows

    • Email follow-up message which leads to an online survey

  • A wireframe map to keep track of the various wireframes

  • A usability test report

  • greater possibility of technical errors.  the widget in the clinic website where there was A report that included recommendations on elevating brand visibility as well as moving the widget to Solv’s site. We provided general business branding strategy with regard to this portion of the project. For example, we provided context on how to reframe the conversation with clinics to further enhance Solv's own site to control for the user experience as opposed to imbedding

 

Annotated Wireframe :: Design decisions and business recommendations are explained here
Annotated Wireframe Set
Wireframe Map :: a map of all wireframes was diagrammed to lessen the confusion

LEARNINGS

The most interesting learnings that came out of our project include both design and business strategy:

 

Design Solutions

  • People love maps, the bigger the better. But in order to influence behavior, made the maps small to force users to click on the map itself to open the map app. It was exciting knowing that we could guide user behavior, sometimes by doing the exact opposite of what they want.

  • The more technically savvy test subjects were wary of inputting personal information into a 3rd party booking widget, especially one that is unknown to them. This gave us a reason to link the clinic name with our client’s name whenever possible. We also added an “about the booking platform” section under the call to action for the patients to input their insurance information. 

 

Strategy Solutions/Recommendations

  • Embedding our client's booking widget on the clinic's site. Our client initially wanted to embed a booking widget into the clinic’s website. Our competitive and comparative review revealed that this is likely to break the widget. Of the various booking platforms and their retail outlets we reviewed, only one embedded their widget into the retailer’s site (OpenTable) and was the only widget that failed. We hypothesized that the clinic’s website administrators will not be as technically savvy as our client’s administrators and could accidentally paste the wrong (or incomplete) code onto their site. Our recommendation was for our client to take full control of the user experience by having the clinics directly link to Solv’s site for the best booking experience. 

  • The clinics requested that our client not brand their booking pages. We argued that having Solv’s name and logo was good for both the clinics and patients in the following ways:

    • ​​Cyberattacks and fishing are on the rise and customers are becoming more tech savvy. If patients realize that the redirected URL no longer matches the clinic’s name, they might suspect a fishing attempt, become anxious and call the clinics. Displaying our client’s name prominently will result in less uncertainty on the patient’s part and reduce the number of concerned calls to the clinics.
    • If the patient is left unaware that Solv is involved in the booking and the code on Solv’s site breaks, the patient will assume that the difficulty is with the clinic, not Solv. They’re likely to blame and call the clinic who is not at fault. For these reasons, we argued that having Solv’s name prominently displayed is beneficial for the clinics. 

 

Key Metrics

  • We will have the results after our client expects to implement this in the coming months.

 

TESTIMONIALS

“They are awesome. I love that they not only did UX work but also provided a win-win strategy for us and our clinics."

Ben, Solv Health Head Designer

“Lucretia was a great project manager."

Raquel Rodriguez, UX Researcher

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