Mediverse

Background

Living in China for 18 years, I have deep experiences with medical services in China. Although there are high quality hospitals here, my family and I encountered inconveniences and challenges in obtaining medical support. Some major problems I noticed include:

• Small clinics and private doctors are not popular. Minor ailments are attended to at large hospitals, leading to long queues.
• Without a family doctor system, patients don't have doctors who are familiar with their medical history to provide ongoing consultations.

Hence, this case study attempts to design a product that enhances the medical experience and assists people in seeking medical help more effectively, using the Chinese medical system as a prototype.

User Research

To delve deeper into concerns regarding the medical experience, I conducted thorough user interviews with multiple participants who regularly seek medical assistance. This allowed me to gain important insights into their health journey and identify areas of difficulty:

• Long queues at every step of seeking medical treatment in hospitals, from registration to consultation, payment, and medication collection.
• Doctors have no time to provide thorough consultation given the long queue.
• Monitoring queue progress: unable to attend to other things or temporarily leave while waiting for consultation.
• Repetitive tests for the same symptoms every visit to the hospital, delaying prompt assistance

Personas

User Journey

Ideations

Using my research insights, I decided to develop a mobile APP with the following features:

• Pre-register to reserve appointments for upcoming hospital visits
• Online registration for hospitals which can be done remotely
• Consult doctors online
• Online prescriptions and options for delivery
• Electric medical records with access to clinical history, test reports and past prescriptions

Pre-register

Iteration 1

• First select hospital and department, then select doctor
• Embedded pre-check with an AI or nurse to help match symptoms to the corresponding department

Iteration 2

• First choose symptoms, then the system automatically recommends the best hospitals to register for

Register

Iteration 1

• Automatic location tracking to the hospital the user is at
• Embedded pre-check with an AI to help match symptoms to the corresponding department
• Shows estimated wait time and directions to the doctor's room
• Leads to online prescriptions and delivery selection when consultation has finished

Iteration 2

• Lists all nearby hospitals and includes a search bar to avoid mistakes in automatic location tracking
• Adds a button to set alarm on the queue progress page
• In-hospital navigation

Consult

Iteration 1

• Pins most frequently consulted doctors (My doctors) for more convenient follow-up consultations
• Feature to send test reports and clinical history in chat
• Leads to online prescriptions and delivery selection when consultation has finished

Iteration 2

• Shows relevant reviews and pricing information after selecting a doctor
• Doctor automatically has access to the patients' test reports and clinical history (deleted this feature from the chat)

Medical Records

Three iterations exploring different layouts.

Mid-fidelity Prototype

Refined each idea and user flow to create mid-fidelity prototype for user testing.

Pre-register

• Used iteration 2 (symptom selection then hospital recommendation) after consulting medical professionals, who suggested it's more intuitive and useful than directly choosing hospitals.

Register

• Mostly followed iteration 2 but removed the in-hospital navigation due to low feasibility and adaptability

Consult

• Used iteration 2
• Added a confirmation page when ended a session and moved payment to when consultation is complete to give users sense of security

Main Tabs

• Home page: contain greetings, upcoming hospital appointments in a carousel, and nearby hospitals
• Register page: contain entrances for registration and pre-registering appointments
• Consult page: my doctors (frequently consulted) and recommended doctors based on clinical history
• Profile: personal information, settings and medical records

Usability Testing

After creating an interactive mid-fidelity prototype, I conducted usability testing with several users in China with extensive medical experiences. While most interactions were smooth, the users encountered some problems with the prototype:

• Some users misinterpret the "upcoming appointments" on the home page as their current hospital, not scheduled visits
• Confused between "register" and "pre-register"

High-fidelity Prototype

Using the above user testing insights, the main modifications I made in the final high-fidelity prototype include:

• Deleted home page: the home page turned out confusing for some users and did not have significant usages. Instead, I changed the landing page onto the new 'register' tab.
• Merged 'register' and 'pre-register' into one user flow since the main difference of the latter was only the selection of a future time slot, and many users were unable to distinguish them.

Register

• Two registration options: by hospital or by symptoms

Prescriptions

• Directly follows from the registration user flow. System automatically directs user to their online prescription (if any) when consultation ends

Consult

Main Tabs

• Landing page will be on the Register tab

Reflections & Takeaways

• Empathy: resonated with the users’ health challenges and medical journey
• Information architecture: organized and simplified flows many times to create user-friendliness

Next steps

• Accessibility: research and examine whether the design fits industry accessibility standards, especially for the handicapped
• Medical accuracy: update and organize medical information such as the classification of symptoms to align with newest medical standards
• Medical end: develop another version of the APP for medical workers and doctors to connect with patients