Saving Clinics Time and Money
Streamlining patient connection through accessibility and prioritization
Project Overview
Desktop browser-based redesign of Remedly’s existing patient portal software. Primary sprint goal was to increase the usability of the patient portal in order to increase patient engagement.
Role
UX Designer and Researcher. Collaborated on a team with two other UX Designers. My focus within the project was the development of the self-scheduling feature.
Client
Remedly
Duration
3 Weeks (Nov. - Dec. 2020)
Context and Challenge
Understanding the Business
Connecting with our client and stakeholders to discover business goals and needs
Remedly’s goal is to save clinics time and money by offering a single software that can integrate practice management, patient portal, marketing, electronic health records, eCommerce and invoicing.
Remedly has a business to business to consumer (B2B2C) model, selling their electronic health record software primarily to aesthetics focused healthcare clinics, such as med spas.
The patient portal is key to Remedly’s goal of saving clinics time and money.
Ideally, the portal should allow patients to independently complete key tasks related to their clinic experience without taking valuable time away from staff.
The Problem
Friction with the portal software wastes time for both patients and clinics
In our initial meeting with Remedly we learned that clinics had been expressing frustration with the portal.
In digging deeper through NPS survey data and interviewing med spa owners, we found that clinic staff was spending valuable time doing tasks that patients should be able to accomplish independently through the portal, such as scheduling an appointment.
Our heuristics and accessibility analysis as well as usability testing of the current portal uplifted significant friction for users.
Our challenge was to increase the usability of the patient portal in order to increase patient engagement with the software.
The time and money clinics would save as a result of an improved patient portal would in turn increase their loyalty to Remedly’s product.
Our Solution
Create a design that prioritizes the three tasks patients most often want to complete
Our initial research showed that patients primarily want to complete three tasks using the portal: scheduling, messaging and making a payment.
Updating the design of these priority task flows to relieve pain points will improve the overall user experience with the patient portal, with a resulting increase in revenue for both clinics and Remedly.
Solution Objectives
Move overall site to an AA WCAG accessibility rating by increasing contrast
Align with best practices to create an intuitive user experience
Leverage prioritization to reduce user overwhelm and visual overload
Discovery
We prioritized empathy building user research in the discovery phase of our design process.
Connecting with Proxy Users through a Survey
Keeping the user (i.e. patients) at the center of our design work was key
Access to end users in B2B2C models can be especially challenging, as feedback is filtered through or often restricted by, the intermediary business. The healthcare space is additionally constrained by HIPAA privacy considerations.
Our initial survey targeted proxy users: any individual who had accessed healthcare or wellness services using an online interface.
Our survey uplifted two significant user trends.
Users access their patient portal using a browser either on their phone (52%) or desktop (79%). This data indicated our design needed to be browser based and mobile responsive.
Users most frequently complete three tasks in a patient portal: scheduling an appointment, messaging a practitioner and making a payment.
Usability Testing the Initial Remedly Patient Portal
We found significant issues with the dashboard and scheduling feature
One of our first steps was to conduct usability testing of the current portal with proxy users to clarify existing friction.
The dashboard is overwhelming
Users found it time consuming to sift through the excess of visual information.
Text was hard to read, making processing the info to accomplish tasks especially difficult.
Appointment scheduling is intimidating and unsatisfying
Users expressed frustration that they could only select windows of availability which then had to be confirmed by the clinic, instead of being able to self-schedule directly.
The long scheduling form only provided error messages at the very end if users had missed a piece of key information, making the process stressful.
Another important part of our discovery phase was understanding best practices.
Looking to Heuristics and Accessibility Standards
Heuristic violations and low contrast validated friction from usability testing
The initial Remedly Patient Portal did not pass WCAG Accessibility standards for contrast, which aligned with the visual overwhelm users experienced in our usability testing.
Using Nielsen’s 10 as our heuristics standard, we identified Heuristic violations with Visibility of System Status, Aesthetic and Minimalist Design, and Consistency and Standards.
Base image from UX Collective
Surveying the Self-Scheduling Landscape
Focusing on consistency and standards through comparative and competitive research
I was in charge of self-scheduling, a feature which surprised me with its complexity.
Given the time constraints of our sprint, I decided to focus on what would be a successful MVP for self-scheduling a single appointment with a single practitioner.
I researched a variety of competitors and comparators, including: Simple Practice, Theranest, Kaiser, Schedulicity, Calendly and even Amazon.
I identified comparative and competitive best practices that would support an intuitive self-scheduling design.
Divide the complex process of booking into concise, sequential sections
Prevent users from moving forward until they have completed necessary tasks in each section
De-emphasize info users aren’t actively using
Show the user where they are in the scheduling process and give them a way to change their selections at any point
Provide a visual context for dates and times
Define
With our initial discovery phase complete, we moved into a define phase which allowed us to translate our research findings into an actionable design strategy.
Defining our Persona
Synthesizing proxy-user data into clear behaviors and characteristics
By affinity mapping the data we gathered in our survey, usability testing and proxy user interviews, we were able to define our persona: the Busy Balancer.
The characteristics, goals, frustrations and needs of the Busy Balancer informed all of our design decisions moving forward.
Design
With a clear strategy and design hypothesis informed by our research we were able to move into the design phase of our process.
As a team, we delivered a high fidelity prototype with interactive flows for scheduling, making a payment and messaging a provider accessed from the dashboard as well as the side menu.
Dashboard Design
Eliminating friction with quick start links for messaging, scheduling and payment
Clear quick start links to remove the visual clutter of the previous dashboard, and allow patients to quickly accomplish their priority tasks.
Self-Scheduling Design
Using best practices and standards to create an intuitive experience
I was responsible for wireframing and prototyping the self-scheduling feature.
From our initial user research and competitive business analysis, I knew that it was key to create an experience that had built-in error prevention and aligned with consistency and standards.
Reducing information overload during scheduling
I hid or de-emphasized information by using drop down menus and sections that expand when active and condense when inactive.
Designing for focus and calm with error prevention and visibility of system status
Numbers next to each section the patient needs to complete in order to successfully schedule lets them know exactly where they are in the process.
After completing a section, highlights from each section are still visible all on one page, with clearly findable edit buttons so users can easily recover from errors.
I was able to maintain an aesthetic and minimalist design even in the most overwhelming section of self scheduling: selecting a date and time.
Streamlining the self-scheduling process
I designed the flow of the previous sections (location —> service —> provider) so that only relevant dates and times are displayed.
Respecting user’s time while preventing scheduling errors
I included a large calendar so users can quickly orient themselves to the highlighted available dates, and scan availability a month at a time.
Time of day filters to allow patients to further specify.
Times are displayed in morning, afternoon, and evening columns so that users can process the times as fast as possible.
Results and Next Steps
Usability Testing Insights
Intuitive dashboard design
During final usability testing, users expressed that the redesigned dashboard was easy to use.
70 percent of test participants accomplished priority tasks using the quick start links, while 30 percent used the side menu for navigation.
Successful MVP for self-scheduling a single appointment with a single provider
The self-scheduling design was very successful in our final usability testing, and all testers expressed how easy and intuitive the process was.
Next Steps
Create an MVP for self-scheduling multiple services with multiple providers
From interviewing med spa owners, we know that occasionally clients will need to book multiple services from multiple providers for the same day.
I provided a cue for adding an additional service in the service selection section, and recommend prioritizing the multiple service and provider capacity in a future sprint.
Reflections
Keys to Successful Collaboration
Intentional and frequent communication
Aditi, Justin and I spent substantial time at the beginning sharing our individual goals and setting group expectations which supported our communication throughout.
Working agile saves time during quick sprints
As a team, we conducted weekly status update meetings with Remedly’s product manager, to make sure we were on the right track.
Early on in the process we also looped in the Remedly’s developer and CTO to make sure our ideas were technically possible, so we didn’t waste valuable time creating designs that ultimately wouldn’t be feasible.
Thoughtful organization maximizes workflow
I love trying new ways to maximize my workflow, and after assessing my teammates workflow preferences I created a streamlined project management spreadsheet which kept us grounded and meeting our daily targets.
This project had a lot of moving parts and extensive research documentation which I was able to effectively organize in this primary spreadsheet.