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.

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 wait up to three hours for a walk-in urgent care appointment. Solv aims to allow patients to book their appointment online from anywhere.

Our client contracted us to create a booking widget user flow and design the appointment confirmation message that was informational, easy to use and allows 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

Exclusion of an intermediate review screen prior to the booking confirmation

DISCOVER

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

We wanted to find out

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 included:

Content must be highly scannable
Users love icons
The vast majority of the booking confirmation systems 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

We used these findings as guidelines for our design.

IDEATION & ITERATION

We accounted 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.

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

Our deliverables included

User Flows
Mid-fidelity annotated wireframes
A wireframe map to keep track of the various wireframes
A usability test report

Value add

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 elevate Solv’s visibility with the patients.

We recommended that Solv keep the widget on their own site for greater control of the user experience; we found that giving the clinics the responsibility of placing the widget on their own sites increases the likelihood of technical errors and poor user experience.

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

“I love that they not only did UX work but also provided a win-win strategy for us and our clinics. The team provided some real value."

Ben, Solv Health Head Designer