A Medical App in The Time of Pandemic and COVID 19: A UX Case Study
This is the story of Currently. A feature app designed to help ease common fears both physically and mentally, in times of pandemic and other COVID 19 related issues. My first real UX design project. One that, unfortunately, is at the forefront of everyone’s minds now more than ever.
The concept behind Currently is simple. People everywhere want to know what’s going on in real time. They want facts and figures, but they also, in light of social distancing and other human centered avoidance, want human interaction and a safe space to discuss their own mental health. This is especially significant with shelter in place and self quarantine mandates.
Doctery, a medical service provider, had that very same thought. And from the beginning stages of this project, so did I.
The problem: How can we create a seamless, interactive medical platform that allows users a level of interaction and (crazy I know) be allowed to receive real time updates and advice from medical professionals in times of public crisis and pandemic?
I thought it might be useful (turns out it really was) to start with some mind mapping. I knew that the two areas I wanted to give the most attention to were the flow and release of information followed by mental health, safe spaces and support.
Creating this mind map helped not only visualize different user pain points, but it allowed for the connection of two different topics and how they collided and resonated beside each other.
Having these key concepts illustrated, I then started thinking about user interviews and research.
Honestly, I didn’t dabble too much with competitive analysis, only because I know that the landscape would be a lot of reading, a lot of the same information, and depending on location, I knew that people in different cities would be having different experiences in the midst of such scary chaos.
That aside, I did look into the CDC and The World Health Organization, as well as some other medical forward marketing sites that had little to no content surrounding COVID-19. They did offer a video chat feature but sites like Lasso Live Chat (that’s a real medical service, I promise) and Medchat were offering services rather than providing users with an experience.
Touching on User Research, I interviewed 10 people asking them seven questions each. I did end up speaking with a lot of people that worked in or around the medical field, which wasn’t expected. But more often than not, I was getting similar responses.
To highlight:
“Having an interactive tool would be interesting” “I don’t trust social media for real news, but I do trust it for real time updates” “I normally trust resources that I know and have used before”
And one of my favorite direct quotes: “Having an interactive platform that I could use in real time would be dope.”
That’s what I thought too.
But it all seriousness, I would say that the information gained from my user interviews taught me a few things.
One: Interaction is a good thing and it is wanted.
Two: Not everyone has a particular trusted medical source that they use above anything else.
And three: Having a safe space to discuss mental health when human interaction is being cut off at the knees, that’s also important to users.
One more time, what’s the problem statement? I’ll remind you in case you forgot. How might we create a simple, seamless, and interactive resource platform directly in correlation with Covid-19 fears and medical worry.
I won’t go into too much detail surrounding the main user pain points because I think what I found to be the most helpful after the problem statement had be revisited and revisited is the sketching, wire-framing and prototyping.
Paint Points: Users don’t have one place to look for all information. Users don’t like the idea of signing up for something if it means that they will get overwhelmed with information, email blasts, extc. Users find that because of this particular public fear surrounding a pandemic, it’s harder to find good resources surrounding mental and physical health and wellbeing.
Whew.
Okay picture time!
And finally, some digital, clickable prototypes that are, in my ux designer in the making opinion, a mockup of a workable, usable product in the future.
After conducting interviews, going back and forth from several drawings board, and really centering myself within the world of medical applications, I think that this is a study that can and should be brought to live. While there are realistic barriers, I do think the effort is well worth it.
You can see the full clickable prototype here.
https://balsamiq.cloud/st3xzws/pd7qlsi/r798C?f=N4IgUiBcCMA0IDkpxAYWfAMhkAhHAsjgFo4DSUA2gLoC%2BQA%3D
