World Doctors United
Duration
Nov 2021
3 week sprint
My Role
UX Designer
Workshop Facilitation
Platform & Sector
Mobile App
Healthcare
Deliverables
UX Research
UI Design
Digital Branding
Product Strategy & Roadmaps
End to end solution for a global healthcare network that connects patients, families and doctors around the world, with a goal to increase life expectancy and quality of care in developing countries
The Design Challenge
Every first-generation migrant from a developing country shares the same challenge. They are responsible for the health and welfare of family members back home, and each year send thousands of dollars to pay for their needs. They worry about their families, wishing they could gain access to better quality healthcare.
The idea is to repatriate health care services to developing countries, ensuring every patient has a health management plan and access to international standards of care. The platform needs to be adapted to each developing market and also address issues around health care workforce, combatting the shortage of skilled workers and gaps in training.
Our client had identified 3 customer groups:
-
The family members in Australia paying for the service
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The patient in developing countries receiving the service
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The doctor in Australia and doctor in developing country providing the service
Background
Each year up to 50% of health care workers in Developing Countries leave for good to find a better life in Developed Countries like Australia, UK and USA.
Brain Drain is a big problem leading to skills gap and an underserved community. 40% of Australia's medical workforce comes from overseas. Our doctor to patient ratio is 3.7 doctors for every 1000 people, in countries like Nigeria it is 1 doctor for every 4000 people.
Meanwhile, patients in developing countries face a lack of access to quality doctors.
They are incorrectly self-medicating or do not go to the doctor until they are very sick (in order to save money) resulting in hospital admissions costing thousands of dollars, and oftentimes leading to death. Most have never had a check up.
Consequently, families of these patients who have migrated to a developed country often worry and feel helpless.
They are usually the head of the family and responsible for the care of family members left behind. These first generation migrants want to be able to give their relatives the same standard of healthcare they are receiving in Australia.
Objectives
The following objectives were provided which guided our key goals for the project
Problem Statement
I was excited to dig in to this wonderful project that could help save lives. With the brief and background information provided, we came up with the following problem statement:
"A first generation migrant feels concerned about their family member's health in a developing country and wants them to access high quality healthcare but they are facing a lack of resources and access to good health care"
01
Discover
Desktop Research / Surveys / Interviews / Competitor Analysis
Desktop Research
Knowing that there were many developing countries that we could help, we first had to narrow our target
We looked at the top 10 countries to immigrate to Australia in recent years (2019-2020) and reviewed this against the top 10 countries to receive remittances from overseas. India was number 1 on both lists.
Top 10 countries to immigrate to Australia
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
India
China
United Kingdom
Phillippines
Vietnam
Nepal
New Zealand
Pakistan
South Africa
USA
Top 10 countries to receive remittances
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
India
China
Mexico
Phillippines
Egypt
Nigeria
Pakistan
Bangladesh
Vietnam
Ukraine
It was suggested that Pakistan should be our target focus due to the lower standards of healthcare. However, further desktop research I did revealed the below statistics on India's healthcare system
20 - 50%
of India's healthcare workers leave to seek employment overseas. It is one of the countries with the biggest brain drain
1.38 billion
is the current population of India. This offers a large market of potential patients/customers
600,000
India has a shortage of 600,000 doctors and 2 million nurses (2019 study)
68.84%
of the population live in rural areas. The healthcare system in rural India faces chronic shortage of medical professionals and is substantially below the recommended levels as suggested by the World Health Organisation
With a large portion of Indian doctors moving overseas, this means more doctors available to serve Australia's number 1 migrant population and their families back home. There is also an opportunity for widespread telehealth adoption, as by 2025 rural India (which has the poorest levels of healthcare) will have more internet users than urban India.
Evidently, our focus had to be on India. I steered the team back on course ensuring our research made sense.
Survey & Interviews
19
Interviews
(India, South Africa, Nepal, Afghanistan, Philippines, Nigeria, Venezuela, Turkey, Bangladesh, Fiji)
66
Survey respondents
7
Doctors
8
Family Members
4
Patients
For the surveys and interviews we split off into 3 groups working in pairs. Each group focused on a seperate customer segment - doctors, patients, families. I was in the doctor group and interviewed migrant and foreign doctors from all over the globe. From this we uncovered some fascinating insights
Families Quotes
Patient Quotes
Doctor Quotes
There was an initial assumption that migrant doctors could provide second opinion to foreign doctors to assist in treating patients, however this was quickly proved wrong. My interviews uncovered that whilst migrant doctors were open to providing a second opinion, they did not think this would determine patient outcome.
Problem Pivot
After our empathy interviews we had a much clearer picture of the frustrations experienced by each group - there appeared to be a lot of distrust in the medical system from both patient and doctor end, whilst families felt helpless they couldn't do anything for their relatives, so our problem statement had a slight pivot
"A first generation migrant feels concerned about their family member's health in a developing country and wants them to access high quality healthcare but faces barriers in regards to accessibility and high cost of healthcare, combined with distrust in the local medical system"
Competitor Analysis
When it came to working out a suitable price, we asked interviewees their preference and also looked at competitors in Australia and India
Although the rates for the Indian telehealth providers are significantly lower, Australian healthcare is far superior. Additionally, all of the telehealth services that were researched had a pay per consult system.
Based on our interviewee feedback + competitor research, we landed on a $34.99 starting rate that increases depending on doctor specialty and length of consult.
Proposed Price Point
$34.99
20 min consult
02
Define
Affinity & Empathy Map / Persona / Customer Journey Map / How Might We
Affinity & Empathy Map
Synthesising research data to discover key themes in the affinity map, and then interpreting the data on an emotional level via empathy maps to better understand our three customer groups.
Personas
From there, we crafted user personas that represented each of our customer groups
Customer Journey Map
Mapping out the patient Aanan Patel's journey helped us to identify pain points & frustrations and contextualise opportunity areas where we can improve his experience
Key Pain Points
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Needs to see doctor but worries that medical bills will be too expensive
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Hospital & healthcare services is far away from home
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Long waiting time to see a doctor
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Unsure about doctors advice to make lifestyle changes, just wants medication that can fix his problems.
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Doesn't trust the doctor
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Buys medicine easily from pharmacy taking wrong dosage in turn worsening his condition
HMW's
This led us to three opportunity statements, one for each user group
How Might We..
1
Help first generation migrants who are concerned about their family members' health in developing countries
2
Provide affordable, high quality healthcare to patients in developing countries.
3
Help migrant doctors who were trained in a developing country obtain jobs and help serve their community back home.
03
Develop
Ideation Workshop / MVP / Card Sort / User Flow
Lo-fi Prototype / User Testing 1 / Mid-fi Prototype / User Testing 2
Ideation Workshop
8
Participants
2
Hours
184
Ideas Generated
I helped facilitate our co-design workshop with the client, which produced a whopping 184 ideas. This involved rapid brainstorming (Crazy 8s - 1 idea per minute) and dot voting on the most desirable and viable options.
MVP
The core function of our solution needed to connect patients to doctors globally
Given our research pointed to mobile being the primary device, we landed on a mobile Telehealth service. The other key factor is being able to involve the families in the consultations and progress so essentially we needed 3 gateways, for patient, family member and doctor.
We also included the below easy-to-implement and desirable features as a result of our MVP matrix, which will further enhance the user experience.
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AI symptom checker (this would be a free service, for patients that can't afford a consult at least they can get some advice)
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Medication checker to check for drug interactions
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Map to show locations of health services (labs, pharmacy etc) including reviews and price indicator
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Ability to show the health progress of the patient for family members
Card Sort
We conducted an open card sort with 6 participants (using Optimal) to determine the grouping & categorisation of information
Similarity matrix was used to identify which types of information would be grouped together e.g. 83% participants grouped the AI symptom checker and medication checker together.
User Flow
A user flow was then created to understand how Aanan would be interacting with the service in respect to the various features. This needed to have a logical flow and enable the app to be intuitive for our users
Lo-fidelity Prototype
Each team member worked on a separate part of the flow when it came to the lo-fi prototype
User Testing 1 (moderated)
3
Praveen's tested
This was then tested with the family member persona (Praveen). We wanted to find out how easy it was to book a doctors consult as well as navigate other areas of the app such as symptom checker and payment settings.
2/3
1/3
Praveens found the overall flow of the app confusing
Praveens thought the symptom tracker should have more options
"The content is good but it doesn't flow well"
Mid-fidelity Prototype
Based on this feedback, we improved the flow and changed the UI elements so that everything was consistent
User Testing 2 (unmoderated)
15
Aanans & Praveens tested
From the Mid-fi prototype we conducted unmoderated testing through Maze
58%
Misclick rate - 7 out of 15 testers experienced confusion with the first onboarding screen (heat map 1) - so we changed this to work as a drag micro-interaction
73%
Success rate with testers creating a new appointment (heat map 2)
100%
Success rate with testers viewing the map feature (heat map 3)
Heatmap 1
Heatmap 2
Heatmap 3
"The buttons were very straight forward and simple to use. I liked how it was just one click"
User Testing 2 (moderated)
4
Praveens tested
Further moderated testing on the mid-fi prototype revealed the below issues
2/4
Praveens were not sure where to click on the introduction screens as there was no slider
2/4
Praveens were confused about the 'Upload photos or files' page as they didn't know what it was referring to
1/4
Praveens prefer free text field for the question 'Tell us what you're feeling?' instead of dropdown selections
1/4
Praveens were unclear about the 'Change Details' button under 'Next Appointment'
1/4
Praveens were not sure where to click on the page that shows 'Recommended Doctor'
Praveens really liked the 'make new appointment' button first thing on home screen
Praveens loved the doctor rating feature! Immigrant communities go by word of mouth and social proof is important
“I’m very sure the people in India will be keen to use the app. They’re always keen to get a second opinion. That’s the culture in India. And especially when they can get exposure to an international doctor. There is trust in the medical system overseas”
$$ Testing
4/4
Praveens thought the proposed $34.99 consult fee was reasonable and preferred to pay per consult rather than paying a subscription
This validated our proposed price point and that users were not interested in a subscription based Health Care Plan.
04
Deliver
UI Design / Hi-fidelity Prototype / Roadmap
UI Design
The client's brand colours were tweaked to ensure compliance with web accessibility standards for colour contrast
Hi-fidelity
Prototype
01 Onboarding
Option to sign up for yourself or a family member. Patient enters basic information and medical history. These details will help match him/her to a suitable doctor.
02 Book Appointment
Patient can select type of consultation, describe their situation and upload any relevant photos & files. Intelligent matching finds the most suitable doctor with option to view other recommendations
03 Join Telehealth Call
Upcoming appointments are shown on home screen. At the time of call, the 'Join Now' button becomes active, allowing 3-way conversation between doctor, patient and family member.
After the call, patient is provided with detailed summary including prescribed medications, treatment plan and doctor's notes, as well as map to locate pharmacies and labs.
04 Access records and other services
Patient can easily access other services like Symptom Checker and Medication Checker from the home screen carousel. Navigating to the Profile screen provides a breakdown of active medications and access to all past appointment notes.
05 Family Member Gateway
The family member in Australia is provided with easy way to view their loved one's
medical progress from the home screen and join upcoming appointments.
Product Roadmap
A feature roadmap was provided to the client including offline services to further enhance the user experience across the short, medium and long term
Learnings
Advocating for the end-user
I had to set aside the client's biases in order to truly listen to our users and understand their real pain points. A number of assumptions were proved wrong and as such I learned the importance of representing the voice of the user throughout this process, from research to testing. When we design the right usable thing, everybody wins.
Remote Collaboration
This was my first time collaborating remotely. There's definitely something about physically working around other people that I miss, but this constraint offered a unique opportunity to learn how to work efficiently and effectively with others under strict time constraints. It was very rewarding to see the pure joy on everyone's faces when our client was thrilled with the final outcome.
"You just blew my mind, that is totally amazing! I am super super impressed. That customer journey was incredibly detailed and the user experience flow was beautiful. It just looked so professional"
Kylie El-Sheikh (Founder CEO, World Doctors United)
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