start assessing
.png){kind=tracking}
Project Overview
Design an app to alleviate stress on healthcare providers, reduce wait times, and improve the overall healthcare experience for users.
During the planning and development of the app, a design thinking methodology was used.
Empathize
Empathize with potential prospective users by conducting interviews and looking at the target market, to see what the industry is missing.
Define
Define my users and the problems they face.
Ideate
Ideate ways to solve the problem by brainstorming ideas, designing task flows, and wireframes.
Design
Design high fidelity screens and a mockup of the finalized idea.
Throughout the empathize stage, I conducted several interviews with people as potential users, having experienced some issues or challenges with either waiting in a waiting room or diagnosing their symptoms.
Below are some interesting things I realized during these interviews.
66%
of participants said they just use Google when diagnosing
1.5 hours
is the average wait time my participants said they endured
3 weeks
is how long most participants had to wait for a doctors appointment
7 months
is how long one participant had to wait to see a specialist
After getting valuable information from my interviewees, I needed to dive deeper into the Medical Industry to really get a handle on the scope of the solution I needed to make.
Below are some facts that I obtained throughout my research that really puts the Medical Industry into perspective.
2 hours
is the average wait time until first assessed
43%
of Canadians were able to get a speedy appointment
25.6 Weeks
is the average wait time for a Canadian see a specialist physician
23%
of patients admitted were within 8 hours target time
Telehealth Ontario is a call-center where you tell a nurse how you are feeling and they will direct you with your next steps. You could be waiting for a while in the calling queue and most of the time they will tell you to just visit a doctor anyway. That doesn’t really help with our problem because we want to reduce the time waiting for advice, when they could quickly take our assessment and either go to the hospital or self medicate.
Diagnosa will reduce the time for advice by giving you instant feedback.
- - -
Mayo Clinic is a medical organization website where you can search for countless symptoms and illnesses. Their symptom checker lists a bunch of pre-written problems, which is good if you fit that certain scenario but it limits user freedom since you may be feeling different variations of a symptom, or not match any of them. Then once you get into each problem there's a whole list of sub-problems to that problem and it feels like problem-ception. The last thing I would want to do if I was in pain or in a hurry would be to fill out countless check boxes and type in all my answers, I just want a quick simple assessment.
Diagnosa will be a simple assessment and give the user control rather using presets.
Diagnosa will take a bit from each, but improve the user experience. It can allow you to take an assessment and receive a possible diagnosis, give you information about that specific illness, and allow you to view the wait times at any hospital, allowing you to assess your own situation and severity.
We want to reduce the wait times by allowing users to complete a quick assessment and deciding if they want to go to a hospital waiting room for something that can be treated at home, potentially freeing up the healthcare system.
The assessment will allow for user freedom, not having preset conditions allowing the user to select their symptoms how they see fit.
The competition seems like either glorified dictionaries or just a call-center, giving Diagnosa the opportunity to improve the user's experience of healthcare.
Sick people who are feeling unwell, need a quick and reliable way to diagnose and assess their symptoms without the need of a nurse, because long wait times and crowded waiting rooms are putting a burden on the healthcare system.
Frustrated
People are frustrated with long wait times.
Sick
People are sick but don't know what it is.
Confused
People are not aware of what to do next.
For my user personas, I wanted to get the perspectives of both a patient and a doctor, since both are affected in some way.
The patient may either choose to self medicate or go to the hospital and ask the doctor for more insight.
After identifying my user and their problem, I needed to figure out How Might We...
Reduce wait times at hospitals
Give patients reliable information about their illness
Help Doctors and Nurses by acting as a resource
Give patients quick access to wait times
Below are some ideas I originally had:
Diagnostic Self Assessment Tool
Interactive game to learn about illnesses
Virtual Assistant you can communicate
View wait times at a hospital
After some thinking about what the users truly needed, I narrowed it down to the following:
Diagnostic Self Assessment Tool
This feature will allow users to take a self assessment, asking them questions regarding their personal information and current symptoms. Upon completing the assessment, a list with a possible diagnosis will appear. Clicking on each of them gives the user information about the illness, providing them sufficient information to assess their need for medical help.
View wait times at a hospital
This feature will allow users to enter a specific hospital and department and show them the current wait time. It will also allow them to call the department or send an SOS alert to medical response teams.
Diagnosa
Pronunciation : di·ag·no·sa
Portmanteau : Diagnostic·Self·Assessment
Diagnosa is a Diagnostic Self Assessment Tool when you are feeling ill; at home or in a hospital waiting room.
It will act as a “triage service”, giving you possible diagnosis results and treatments.
With this information you can either view wait times and go to a hospital, choose to self-medicate at home, or if you are already at the hospital, show the doctor your results giving them an extra tool and more clarity for a possible diagnosis.
A user needs a way to map out the problem or multiple problems they need solved.
Below are some example flows:
The first flow is where the user would take an assessment, receive the list of possible diagnosis results and click on a button that shows them wait times at hospital if they wanted to proceed with treatment right away and get further evaluated.
The second flow is where the user would take an assessment, receive the list of possible diagnosis results and scroll through the certain illness or condition and If the condition is not severe or needing further evaluation they could look for treatment options for which they could self-medicate, freeing up the hospital .
The third flow is where a user would already know and want to go to the doctor and would like to see the wait times.
During each user flow there are also task flows, showing the user the steps needed to satisfy their goal, with each of my task flows having a beginning and an end.
Below are some example flows:
Take an Assessment
Taking an assessment requires you to provide personal information (including weight, height, family history), select all your symptoms and then finally submit.
Get a Diagnosis
Getting a diagnosis requires you to take an assessment then allowing you to scroll through your top matched results and selecting one to view more information.
View Wait Times
There are two different ways to view wait times at a hospital.
To view wait times from the home screen, simply press the button and enter a location and department.
The other way to view wait times is through taking an assessment, selecting a diagnosis and clicking the button on that page, then proceeding to enter a location and department.
View Figma PrototypeI created brand guidelines to make sure my design remained consistent with the brand identity.
The Colours
I decided to go with different shades of blue, teal, white and black. I chose white and black as complementary colours, to be used for text and making backgrounds minimalistic. The shades of blue and teal have a more psychological meaning behind them. Blue represents safety, calmness and wisdom, all the traits you look for when you are in distress or seeking medical treatment.
The Logo
I decided to go with a combination mark logo for Diagnosa. I included the brand name and a heart with a pulse line through. This represents that it is a health app. I created a primary, secondary and favicon logo. The primary logo has the heart on top of the word, the secondary logo with the heart beside the word, and the favicon is just the heart. I decided that by having two different logos I could use them for different scenarios, one for mobile and documents and the other for web, as shown in the brand guideline.
The Typefaces
I used 3 different typefaces throughout my app. CocoSharp is the typeface I used for my logo, since it really stood out to me, being a clean sans serif font and it looked like something that could be in the industry. Poppins is the main typeface used throughout the app for those same reasons, but it seemed like a more well balanced typeface that can be used for headings and throughout the assessment questions. Futura PT is the third typeface to be used for the text regarding the diagnoses and treatments, to represent the dramatic effect and seriousness of these situations.
The Mockup Screens
Throughout each of my screens, I wanted to give it a minimalistic look, only providing what is absolutely necessary. Since the application’s setting is in the medical field, a timely response for a diagnosis and treatments are very important. When designing the splash screen, a very quick animation was shown, since I still wanted to give user feedback, but in a timely manner. For each of the assessment question pages I kept it fairly simple, with no long text boxes or preset values, since each individual may be feeling different variations of a symptom, allowing for user freedom. Once submitting the results, and receiving user feedback, they are displayed in a clear layout with good hierarchy, whitespace and a balanced view of each cardview/symptom box, where emphasis was put on the name and the match percentage, giving the user some clarity as to which of the diagnosis results are the most likely. On the View Wait Times screen, large text and easily accessible buttons were visible right away on the screen, in the case of an emergency.
By listening and communicating with your users, you truly understand their problems and what their needs are.
By receiving feedback early and often, you are either able to correctly validate your assumptions, or fail fast and learn from your mistakes.
Similar to asking for feedback, learning about your users and the problem allows you to truly get a hold on what solutions can be used for any problem a user may have.
Overall, this project was a success. I managed to determine my users, their needs, and come up with a solution that benefits them.
