Healthcare
Mobile
B2B
Research
PBACO's real-time hospital notification app notifies physicians in real-time whenever their patients are admitted or discharged from the hospital. This enables them to act quickly to ensure the most appropriate patient care and to prevent costly hospital readmissions.
As designer and product support manager, I conducted a research and design sprint to increase discoverability of critical hospital alerts in order to improve health and financial outcomes for patients and their doctors.
Disclaimer: The following case study contains no PHI or sensitive information.
Role
Interviews, research, prototypes, remote usability testing, product support
Team
• Designer (me)
• Researcher (me)
• Product Support (also me, it's a startup!)
Timeline
4 weeks
Impact
• 53% higher discoverability
• 10x increase in user satisfaction
BACKGROUND
How it's supposed to work
Physicians receive an alert whenever a patient is admitted to or discharged from the hospital, which they are expected to act upon in a timely manner. The company tracks physicians' weekly app performance, which factors in to their annual reimbursements.
However…customer support tickets told a different story.
INSIGHT A
Users weren't sure where to find alerts
At least 25% of customer support tickets came from users reporting that their "alerts were missing". Most of the time, the alerts were in fact not missing, but they were hidden several layers deep and lacked necessary signifiers to help users find what they were looking for.
This also made it difficult to easily view all alerts received for a specific week, because old alerts would often get mixed with newer alerts.
Because alerts were difficult to find, it gave the perception that the app was unreliable.
INSIGHT B
Users often weren't sure what action to take
The alert preview didn't make the next course of action obvious, and because of this, users would often not respond to hospital admission or discharge alerts.
From interviewing users and conducting a baseline usability test, it turned out that there was confusion about the meaning of alert colors. Additionally, it turned out that users didn't really understand what that next action indicator on the bottom-right corner meant, further adding to the confusion.
INSIGHT C
Alert details weren't the easiest to read
When I would assist users with their app in-person, over time I noticed that many users had the text enlargement option on their phones set to very large. Even though it's not something that users typically submit tickets for, this indicated that the default sizes and colorings of app elements were not meeting accessibility guidelines, especially for size and contrast.
PROBLEM
The confusing layout of the app is frustrating users and leading to time-sensitive hospital notifications not being acted upon.
TESTING
Conducting remote usability tests to validate designs
I used a remote usability testing platform called Maze in order to test my designs with users. I created and uploaded a Figma prototype and added survey questions in order to capture both quantitative and qualitative feedback. In total there were 3 tests across 2 studies, with 57 users participating in total.
SOLUTIONS
Improving wayfinding by displaying alerts by week
Addresses:
A. Poor discoverability
Showing unique patient alerts per week allowed users to easily view all alerts per week, as well as access patient alerts without having to dig into the alert history tab.
In the 1st redesign, I tried displaying every single alert in an episode, but it ended up adding clutter and didn't result in significantly better discoverability.
The 2nd redesign hit the right balance between maneuverability and showing the most relevant information.
Making the next steps and completed steps more obvious
Addresses:
B. Unclear directions
According to usability test results, users were confused by the meaning of the grey "next action" indicator, as well as with what each color represents. Explicitly labeling the color, and replacing abbreviations with visual indicators made it more intuitive for users to see completed and uncompleted tasks.
Making details more readable
Addresses:
C. Poor Readability
I implemented several changes to make the design more accessible, including increasing minimum font size to 16pt and making sure that font contrasts enough against the background. In the survey feedback, users appreciated that the redesigns made the alerts both more legible and simpler to understand.
RESULTS
The redesign improved discoverability and usability
During usability testing, participants navigating the 2nd redesign had a combined 74% success rate, greater than the 21% success rate of the original. Furthermore, 0% of users found the happy path on the first try using the original, but with discoverability improvements, 33% of users found the happy path using the 2nd redesign.
Users were more satisfied with the redesign
When asked how straightforward the 2nd redesign was was, 33% of participants responded "very straightforward", representing a 10x increase over both the original and the 1st redesign.
Feedback regarding the 2nd redesign was also more favorable compared to the original:
"I don't use the app at all and I was able to find it."
"I do this often to help my drs find missed alerts."
"Very user-friendly. it was quick and easy to locate previous dates."
Overall, the 2nd redesign was a big improvement in terms of usability and user satisfaction.
Impact
The remote usability tests provided invaluable qualitative and quantitative feedback about the existing app and my proposed design improvements:
• 53% higher discoverability
• 10x increase in user satisfaction
TAKEAWAYS
"Just train the users better" only goes so far
The prevailing sentiment within the organization to poor app performance metrics was that physicians and practices needed to be trained better, very much a "We're paying you to do this" type of energy. Not only did this way of thinking not address long-standing pain points, it was simply not scalable given the app's growing user base. This usability study was a valuable tool in documenting usability issues within the app and showing the potential for improvement by making the app more user-friendly.
