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.
We were contracted to create
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a booking widget user flow
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redesign the appointment confirmation message
Our client’s business objectives were to
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become the friendly go-to urgent care booking platform
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make their clinics happy
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promote brand recognition
Design constraints specified by our client include
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Exclusion of an intermediate review screen prior to the booking confirmation
Problem Statement
How might we help those creating a booking an urgent care appointment receive confirmation feedback with all needed and relevant information?
DISCOVER
Exploration of the current web app included
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A competitive and comparative analysis
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Informal interviews (client did not want formal interviews)
Our research was guided by interview and user goals:
User Goals
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Efficiently create a booking
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Have all booking information included in their confirmation message (online and email)
Interview Goals
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What information is perceived to be the most valuable to the person booking the service?
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Do users want feedback about the personal information they used to register?
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Is it safe to assume they know they need to bring their ID and health insurance information?
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Do patients want their appointment recorded on their calendar even if the appointment is only an hour from the time of booking?
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How much appointment information do people want?
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How much location information do people want? Maps?
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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
Our findings included
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Content must be highly scannable
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Users love icons
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The vast majority of the booking confirmation systems had appointment information, name, and location of the place of appointment.
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Maps are well-received; the bigger the better
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Arrange information into distinct chunks to reduce cognitive load
We used these findings as guidelines for our design.
From our interviews, we created Samantha who is the primary person in her family scheduling doctors appointments. She was our focus during our design efforts.
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 of the way. We made a few sketches and moved into task-based paper prototyping.
User Flows
Covered various user actions including
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confirmations
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cancellations
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entering health insurance information
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sending appointment information to another person
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and other potential user actions
Sketching & Ideation - Booking confirmation & email confirmation
We tested how much users remembered what was stated in the confirmation sketches.
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Map: The map was the biggest challenge. Users wanted a big map but users tended to ignore all the information under the map. We tested a number of designs to determine best map format & placement.
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Icons: We learned that icons were a huge hit.
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Except... When it came to an "edit" functionality. Users preferred having the text or text + icon.
mobile app booking confirmation
email booking confirmation
SOLUTION
The Ah-ha
It finally occurred to us that we could manipulate user behavior through design. By making the map small and "useless," users were forced to click on it to open their native map app, bypassing the need for a large map in the confirmation.
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We designed confirmation screens and emails for:
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mobile phone web
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mobile tablet web
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desktop web
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phone email
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tablet email
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desktop email
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printout
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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.
Mobile app confirmation - Booking confirmation & email confirmation
We had to show the various "states" of confirmation, including when a patient changes their appointment time or adds their health insurance information or if they cancel their appointment.
Mobile app booking modals and pop-ups
There were additional functionalities we had to account for, including adding insurance information, appointment cancellations, adding the appointment to their calendar, forwarding the confirmation to a family member, etc.
Mobile phone mail confirmations and a few variations
Tablet and desktop web & email confirmations
Printouts
As many older users routinely print out their confirmations.
LEARNINGS
The most interesting learnings that came out of our project include both design and business strategy:
Design Solutions
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People love big maps but make them small to persuade users to click on the map to open the map app. Sometimes you have to design the exact opposite of what users want to get the desired behavior.
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Technically savvy users were wary of entering personal information into an unknown 3rd party booking widget. This gave us reason to link the clinic name with Solv's name whenever possible.
Strategy Solutions/Recommendations
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Recommended that patients book appointments directly on Solv's site so that Solv controls the user experience vs. placing a booking widget on the clinic's site.
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The clinics requested that Solv 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:
- If patients realize that the redirected URL doesn't match the clinic’s name, they might suspect a fishing attempt and call the clinics. Making patients familiar with Solv's will result in less concern.
- If the site breaks and the patient believes that they are on the clinic's site, the patient will assume that the clinic is at fault, not Solv. They’re likely to blame and call the clinic.
TESTIMONIALS
“I love that they not only did UX work but also provided a win-win strategy for us and our clinics. The UX team provided some real value."
Ben Ramirez, Solv Health Head Designer