CASE STUDY
Plan A Health Clinic
How To Make a Patient-Focused Mobile Clinic Website
UNDERSTAND
The Problem
Plan A is opening its first mobile clinic in the Mississippi Delta in early 2021. Their existing site was helpful to them when they were raising money for the mobile clinic. But now that the mobile clinic is closer to being a reality, they need a redesign that focuses on the patient experience.
The new website needs to make it easy for people to find information on services provided and the clinic’s locations and dates.
So, our problem statement became…
People of the Mississippi Delta area need to have access to medical care.
We were facing the problem of creating a mobile clinic platform for non-tech-savvy people to bring medical care to every rural area.
UNDERSTAND
The Initial Research
At the beginning of the research phase, Plan Health equipped us with why they chose the Mississippi Delta for its first location. The initial research helped us understand their patients' many pain points and helped us create questions and themes for the further research that we conducted.
Observational Study
We audited the original website to confirm the pain points and issues we gathered from the client's information.
We talked with our potential target audience about Mobile Clinics to receive more qualitative feedback.
UNDERSTAND
The Market
The competitive analysis comprises a few websites our clients liked, other mobile clinics, and a food truck. We wanted to have a mixture of what our client wanted and what our direct and indirect competitors were.
We audited 5 clinic websites to find existing features, patterns, and interactions:
Covid-19 Updates, Appointment requesting, Interactive Location Map, Volunteer Forms, Patient Portal, Desktop and Mobile Version,
and Blog
UNDERSTAND
The Results
Our client already had some information about the target audience by doing focus group research before starting the project. We decided to conduct a survey to check the prototype's main ideas and learn more about our users.
Because of time and lack of response from our primary target audience, we decided to create a backup survey that we gave to an audience close to our original but were based in an urban area.
What Services Is More Important to You?
60% Breast Cancer
52% STD Testing & Consulting | Blood Pressure | Cholesterol
This helped us understand what services people needed the most.
Which One Do You Use More?
80% Phone
15% Computer | 5% Both
This helped us understand that we needed to create a mobile-first website.
Would You Like To Suggest a Location for the Mobile Clinic on the Website?
95% Said Yes | 5% Said No
We added this feature to add the community voice in our design.
IDENTIFY
The User
We conducted user interviews, combined those findings with our research results, and created user personas for the website. These personas describe the demographic that we were trying to reach for our app.
We selected to create a scenario of the average patient for the Plan A Clinic from our research. I interviewed a local community member, and she told me all about her town and who she was. We combined those thoughts with the Plan A focus group research to represent the people of this town.
IDENTIFY
The User Journey
After understanding our user persona, we create a user journey representing a person who would use the Plan A website. By gaining that step by step's thought process, it was easier to understand what features we needed to add to our app. From our user interview, we understood our personas' pain points and created the website with that in mind.
IDENTIFY
Key Insights
During our understanding deck, we created principles for our project. After our qualitative and quantitative research, we tested those principles and found that we were right. We also learned new features and designs that would help patients feel this way while using the Plan A website.
Intuitive
Information is easy to access, and preparing for a doctor's visit is an intuitive process.
Comfortable
Provide a safe and trusting space for our patients and their community.
Empowering
Enables patients to take pride in their bodies and take care of themselves.
IDENTIFY
The User Story
Creating a user story came easily. After our user interviews, we understood more about our user's thought process to want to use our app and how using it will help them answer.
IDENTIFY
The Site Map
After creating the story maps and the user journey, we started our user flow. We considered each step our users would have to go through to make sure they can accomplish all their goals when coming to the Plan A website.
EXPLORE
The Wireframes
We conducted user interviews and combined those findings with our research results, and created user personas for the app. These personas describe the demographic that we were trying to reach for our app.
EXPLORE
The Prototype
Our client approved the wireframe, and that helped us create the first version of our high-fidelity prototype. Using that feedback, we edited the first version and conducted another round of usability tests to develop this latest version of the Plan A Health website.
OUTCOME
#2: Page Size
"It is a very long page, maybe
make less text or make it
shorter somehow."
We found that multiple people would not want to scroll down to search for information during usability testing. This led to many page abandonment and made people confused because they would not gain that information. The fix was to hide and show information at the user's discretion to shorten the page.
OUTCOME
#3: Page Titles
"I am confused about what is
the difference between a team
and doctors."
We found that multiple people were confused about the "our doctor's" page and the "our team" page during our usability testing. The issue was the title to the page, and the subtitles all had different names to them. The best move was to label everything on the "our doctor's" page to the word provider. We also move the new name "our provider's page under the patient drop-down section to make it easier for them to find.
EXPLORE
Next Steps
This project has taught me a lot about working with a client and making sure that we are consistently on the same page. In my role as a project manager, I found new ways to organize myself and my team.
Plan A First mobile clinic is launching in February 2021. We talked with our clients about their plans:
Create an appointment option
at the website
Because there are still logistical goals that have not been met yet we could not create an appointment option for people. That is something the client wants to do in the future.
Develop a blog or community resources
Because there are still logistical goals that have not been met yet we could not develop these things, but the client would like to have this as an option for the future
Events
Because there are still logistical goals that have not been met yet we could not start creating Plan A events to engage more with the local community.
More Work
OUTCOME
#1: Change to an Intuitive Navigation
“Blood Test was not clickable.
I want to go from there.”
We found that multiple people would click on the title of service during our usability testing and expecting to move onto another action. We decided to fix this issue by creating a pop up that navigated them to the next step of "finding a location."
OUTCOME
#4: Call To Actions
"I want to see doctors, locations, hours, is it free? Do you accept
my insurance?"
We found that multiple people were missing the site guide called "See a Doctor" help first-time users of the website navigation and find information during our usability testing. We fixed this by changing the CTA button to "Visit Our Clinic," making it more obvious the goal of that button.
