Company
GE Healthcare
Design Challenge
Year
2018
Type
UX & UI
DESIGN CHALLENGE
How might we most effectively route a hospital patient through their journey of care, resulting in quality care, patient satisfaction, and operational efficiency?
Why
Hailing from a diversity of backgrounds and geographies patients seek care at hospitals and outpatient clinics for numerous reasons. Patients want to receive safe, high-quality care that is compassionate and responsive to their needs. Better clinical outcomes are of course important, but patients want to feel as safe and comfortable as possible while they are receiving care. Making the patient feel heard, attended to, and respected is important to making their experience a positive one.
Who
The key audience, we could build products for are:
Inpatient: A patient is admitted to a room for an overnight stay or numerous days with continuous general nursing services in an area of an acute care facility.
Outpatient: A patient receives a diagnosis and/or treatment at a hospital, but does not stay overnight.
From this list, I’d like to focus on one group: Maternity outpatients that are expected to be inpatients, and their journey.
When & Where
The whole experience of expecting a newborn, caring for one and building a family can be overwhelming as future parents work towards gathering the right information to have the pregnancy and have parenthood be a success. It is important for women to have choices and to be in control of their pregnancy and birth experiences. Education is an essential part of a healthy pregnancy. Complications during pregnancy and delivery can result in several negative impacts on families, the healthcare system, and society as a whole. Complications often lead to increased costs, which are borne by consumers and public or private insurers.
Main User Stories
New moms rely on various sites without knowing the source or accuracy of the information presented. This behavior becomes increasingly worrisome when related to health. Pregnancy can be an exciting and sometimes scary experience, so naturally, it comes with a lot of questions. In an effort to significantly increase breastfeeding rates and educate women with healthier pregnancies, hospitals want to combat unverified information and keep women and their babies healthy.
As a maternity outpatient, I want access to clinical information on common pregnancy symptoms and milestones.
As a maternity outpatient, I want to get personalized resources from my provider.
As a maternity outpatient, I want to be able to track my contractions so I know whether it’s time to go to the hospital.
As a maternity outpatient, I want to have access to Primary Care forms and to sign them before heading to the hospital.
Solution
Hypothesis: Streamlining the care process for hospitals and clinics, patients will achieve higher quality care and this will increase patient satisfaction.
Hospitals need a more relevant, adaptable way to communicate with patients other than the maternity booklets that were the primary source of information.
A branded hospital maternity app facilitates the access of a pregnant woman to critical information, common pregnancy symptoms, key health milestones. As more patients turn to their smartphones for managing their health and care options, they prefer to engage with their health care system digitally. By connecting with patients via mobile app, providers can adopt a proactive role in shepherding new moms along their care journey with purpose and compassion.
From keeping track of appointments to providing answers related to pregnancy and newborn care, a branded pregnancy app is a phenomenal way to engage patients, win new customers, and promote pregnancy care services.
MY PROCESS
Design Process
Personas
My project concentrates on moms that use technology to manage their health care options. Technology has proven useful in monitoring a baby’s health and movements. Mobile-savvy moms rely on smartphones for managing their health and care options. They prefer to engage with their health care system digitally.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
User Flow
The way the content is organized is as important as the content itself. In my case, the user’s success with finding the right resource depends on accessibility to the right articles and tools.
The basic user flow is very simple — you start with sign-in/up and then get access to the main navigation bar where you can either read about the pregnancy progress, read relevant articles or fill-out all the hospital forms.
IMPLEMENTATION
Low Fidelity Wireframes
By doing low-fi prototypes, I was able to go through a lot of design ideas and quickly find the right ones.
Splash Screen: Onboarding
Onboarding tutorial: greet, inform, engage. Log in with clinic credentials or sign up. Communicate the value propositions. A set of screens that are shown to the user in case of the first interaction with the product. It gives a quick insight into what problems the app solves, how it can help the user and what benefits it gives.
Sign-up page
Sign up screens or Log in with clinic credentials. By entering the estimated due date, the app will provide a more personalized experience for the user.
Home Feed
The weekly pregnancy overview and the index about the trimesters contain links, where the user access the various checklists from the provider.
Contractions Timer
Contraction Timer helps the user time how long and how frequent your contractions are when going into labor. It shows the time of each contraction, the durations and the interval between them. A notification will appear when it’s time to go to the hospital.
Checklists
With these lists the user will take gradual
steps tobe ready to welcome the baby and prepare for the birth.
Individual List
User is able check a complete item, to add a new item to the list and delete.
Resources
Offer more targeted messaging and care based on consistent objectives. Instead of frustrating users with irrelevant notifications or pages of unnecessary content, new moms could quickly engage with helpful resources they wouldn’t have known to look for.
Articles
The user will get access to personalized articles from the provider.
Hospital Forms
Lets the user fill, sign, and send any form fast, also download or print.
Account Settings
Where the user can manage hospital settings, personal info, notifications, privacy, and security
LINKING STRATEGY
Taxonomy
After analyzing the low fidelity wireframes, I created a user flow for the screens to have a more detailed navigation map of the app
DEFINING VISUALS
DEFINING VISUALS
Visual Research
Before starting the visual designs, I created an inspiration board. The purpose is to learn about the visual world and to gather inspiration from other woman and hospital apps.
STYLE GUIDE
STYLE GUIDE
Colors
The healthcare industry relies on blue as a primary color more than any other industry. Teal is a medium blue-green that is fitting for a branded hospital maternity app. To elevate the patient experience, even more, I used gray for the text and included a great deal of white to give a calm and clean appearance. This choice makes perfect sense when we consider what customers associate with the color blue: knowledge, tranquility, security, and trust. In the stress-filled environment of healthcare, where both well being and finances are vulnerable, blue is a tried-and-true way to show your competence
STYLE GUIDE
STYLE GUIDE
Typography
Roboto is a neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface family developed by Google. It is a well- balanced sans serif typeface superfamily that seems to complement the interface. Simplicity was the leading mantra; therefore, I decided to go with just one font family.
STYLE GUIDE
STYLE GUIDE
Iconography
Icons are an important part of the design. They communicate ideas and concepts that should not and sometimes cannot be communicated with words. Furthermore, they allow consistency of the visual aesthetics that help build the users’ trust and produce moments of delight.
UI Principles
Simplicity
A more complicated application is not necessarily a better application. The layout should be user-friendly with clear, easy to access features that are arranged in a convenient way
Clarity
Users should always know exactly where they are within an application
Consistency
The application must be consistent overall with all of the necessary basic navigation features such as four–direction navigation, going into levels, or returning to the previous screen on the content list
Bold look and feel
Yet, memorable. Oversized typography is one of the easiest ways to make an impact.
IMPLEMENTATION
High Fidelity
By empowering moms and relieving physicians while offering a more complete picture of what to expect, the app elevates the patient experience with the hospital and can fulfill its commitment to compassionate, community oriented care.
Next Steps
• Deep research about specific features
• Usability test of the prototype with users
• Improve user flow
• A comprehensive business model
• Expand the experience to the inpatient needs
Final Thoughts
Designing the app has been a challenging and rewarding journey. My goal was to provide a simple solution while showing my thought process.
