Patients First

A digital possibility to gap patient & healthcare language barriers.

Booking medical appointments with a translator just got easier—the Patients First task flow connects Limited English Language Proficiency Patients (LELPPs), translators and medical professionals during appointments. The iOS app helps LELPPs to feel confident about understanding their medical appointments.

Example

Before diving in, here is a…

Logistical overview:

  • Project type:

    Academic

  • Duration:

    3 Weeks

  • Role:

    UX Researcher & UX/UI Designer

  • Platform:

    iOS (Mobile App)

  • Tools:

    Figma & InVision

  • Contraints:

    Tight timeline & WCAG AA Standards

Project Brief

Over the duration of 3 weeks, the UX Design bootcamp I attended at BrainStation required students to complete a digital design project. The design project involved researching a human-centric problem and incorporating user feedback and thoughts into the solution.

The Design Process

I approached the project in a non-linear fashion, using a design-thinking process. User-centered design was at the heart of all my decisions, so naturally, iterations based on multiple rounds of feedback was imperative.

Empathize

Inspiration

I was inspired to further investigate this space because I have family members who are LELPPs—they need translations in order to be confident in the knowledge that they understood the medical expert and vice versa.

Problem Space

I began by researching using the internet in order to understand if there were existing pain points or problems that affected LELPPs. The following is the problem space, which was founded through preliminary research:

According to Al Shamsi, Hilal, et al., “26.4% of LELPPs reported that there were no interpreters in their healthcare institutions”, which can lead to physical harm due to misunderstandings attributed to language barriers. Language barriers have not sufficiently seemed to be addressed in the Telehealth industry, thus leaving LELPPs language needs unmet.

Secondary Research

After understanding the general problem space, I conducted further internet research in order to have a more robust understanding about the matter and how it further impacts LELPPs. The following are a few snippets of my main findings:

“70.7% of LELPPs reported limited availability of interpreter services.”

-Al Shamsi, Hilal, et al., 2020

“52.4% of LELPPs experienced some failure in communication with medical providers.”

-Al Shamsi, Hilal, et al., 2020

“49.1% of LELPPs have experienced adverse health events that resulted in detectable physical harm.”

-Al Shamsi, Hilal, et al., 2020

Primary Research

In order to better understand the day-to-day problems that EAL Teachers may face interviews were conducted with 3 LELPPs, with the goal of understanding the following:

  • The process of setting up and attending a medical appointment for an LELPP.

  • What their biggest pain-points were.

  • How often they setup/attended medical appointments and why.

When conducting interviews I created a casual and judgement free environment⁠—the following are further details about the interview:

  • The Who

    3 LELPPs who knew how to use at least one digital device, and were living in North America were interviewed.

  • The Method

    The interviews were decontextualized⁠—the product wasn’t used for the interviews.

  • The How

    The interviews were conducted in Farsi over the phone and took place in the manner of open-ended questions, then they were transcribed into English.

Define

Primary Persona

The primary persona was created after interviewing participants. The following persona reflects the frustrations, behaviours, goals, and characteristics of the participants that were interviewed:

Design Challenge

The interviews and the persona helped to inform the following design challenge:

How might we help LELPPs bridge the language barrier that they may experience with healthcare professionals using digital technology in order to provide them with acceptable healthcare guidance?

Experience Map

Understanding Yasmine’s process regarding medical appointments helped me to better understand the areas that she could benefit from having a digital solution in place, therefore the following Experience Map was created:

Affinity Map

Once the interviews were complete, common themes and insights were derived from them. This was done by creating the following affinity map using sound bites from the interviews:

Themes and Insights

The following themes and insights were derived from the Affinity map:

Better Communication

LELPPs need to know that they were understood by the medical professional and vice-versa.

Medical Misunderstandings

LELPPs need to know that they were understood by the medical professional and vice-versa.

Inconveniencing Others

LELPPs would prefer to be independent and not burden folks they care about.

Selected Theme & Insight

The “Better Communication” theme and its corresponding insight were chosen as a result of the user interviews—solving for it would best serve the users.

Ideate

User Stories and Epics

User stories were created based on the persona and the selected theme/insight, they were sorted and grouped under the following epics:

Epic One

Scheduling translator & medical appointments.

Epic Two

Being satisfied by interpretations.

Epic Three

Accessing appointment logistics.

The “Scheduling translator & medical appointments” epic had the most user stories and was therefore selected. The selected user stories within the epic were then broken into tasks which helped inform the design. The following is the epic and it’s corresponding user stories and tasks:

Task Flow

The tasks that were derived from the relevant user stories were used to inform the Task Flow. The following Task Flow Diagram helped to inform content components and the connections between them:

Prototype

Solution Sketches

After creating multiple exploratory sketches, I came up with the following solution sketch because it seemed to best address the users’ needs:

Mid-Fi Prototype (Version 1)

The solution sketch helped inform the initial mid-fi prototype below (Note: the mid-fi prototype is version 1 of 3):

Test

Usability Testing

Usability testing was conducted with 5 users in order to obtain practical real-time feedback—the feedback was incorporated to improve the design.

The usability testing was based on 1 persona, and users were provided with the following scenario:

As an LELPP you would like to book a doctor’s appointment and an interpreter appointment in tandem. You’ve already created an account and an up-to-date profile (ex. set language), but have never used the app to book both an interpreter and a healthcare professional for the same appointment.

Feedback based Revisions

Major Change One: Confirmation and Inquiry Popup

Problem: In the original prototype after selecting a healthcare professional users were taken directly to the “Select Interpreter” screen, which looked very similar to the screen before. This was problematic because the users didn’t notice that they were taken to a new screen and weren’t given the option of selecting a new interpreter.

Solution: A popup was added to the revised mid-fi prototype both indicating that a healthcare professional was selected and inquiring if an interpreter was required.

Major Change Two: Calendar Functionality Description

Problem: The original prototype didn’t have a description on the screen with the calendar that is meant for booking an appointment with both the interpreter and the medical professional. Users were confused about what exactly they were booking.

Solution: In the revised prototype a description was added above the calendar to inform users of the calendars functionality.

Mid-Fi Prototype (Version 2)

After conducting user-testing a priority map was created, and the highest priority feedback was incorporated into Version two of the Mid-Fi prototype.

 

Future Plans and Thoughts

Future Plans

The following future plans for the app were made with the users’ needs in mind:

Develop Brand

I plan to create a Mood Board, research colour and font combinations, and create logos.

I hope to create a cohesive brand that best appeals to the users.

Create High-Fi Prototype

I plan to create a hi-fidelity prototype based on the user-tested mid-fidelity prototype.

The prototype will be on brand and will best fulfill the users needs.

Research Secondary Personas

I plan to conduct secondary and primary research to try and understand both the translator and the medical professional.

This will help make the app more user-centric.

Key Learnings

I believe that it is important to constantly reflect in order to learn to better serve the users—the following are my key reflections about the 3 week challenge:

The key is in the details

I learned that the small details help guide the user’s journey when they interact with an app.

For example, when appropriate it’s important to have confirmation screens in order for a user to know they have successfully achieved their goal.

Time considerations when interviewing

Since I conducted the user interviews in Farsi but took notes about the findings in English it took a bit more time.

I think the interviews would have been more efficient and natural if they were recorded with permission and transcribed into English afterwards.

Thank you for dropping by⁠, onwards digital wanderer!

Questions? Please contact me.