Children’s Minnesota, like many web pages nowadays, can be translated into multiple languages. However, this novelty only applies to certain pages which isn’t necessarily helpful or user friendly for parents trying to receive timely care. For immigrants navigating such a website can add unnecessary stress on top of their day to day life.
The goal of the UX Healthcare case study was to identify and create solutions for unique problems within a chosen area within the healthcare industry. The project required thoughtful consideration for a chosen user experience while navigating and receiving care as well as re-designing the visual identity of the website and app.
Children’s Minnesota exclusively serves children to young adulthood across the Twin Cities area. Whose mission is to provide patients with quality, and family centered care through advanced research and education.
The symptom checker on Children’s Minnesota is a unique interactive experience for parents to identify the severity of symptoms and receive recommendations on care. A pain point of the questionnaire is that the results can’t be integrated into the scheduling process. Instead users are given several options except scheduling an appointment.
Miscommunication between patients, caretakers, and pediatricians leads to negative experiences scheduling an appointment, improper diagnosis, under or over utilization of medication as well as challenges with ordering consent.
How can we bridge the health literacy gap and make health care more accessible to immigrants while improving the experience for patients and pediatricians?
Through researching accounts from first hand experiences as well as identifying pain points in the user journey, I identified and developed potential features to explore to accommodate users’ specific understanding of English and proficiency in health literacy. The following were the identified as top priorities for the project:
1. Integrate symptom checker into multiple use cases; scheduling an appointment, virtual care or finding at come treatments.
2. Visually enhancing UI to make the overall experience enjoyable and easy to navigate.
3. Bridge the language and health literacy barrier by providing users options to select their own proficiency.
The project’s goal is to help immigrant families receive effective care, specifically those who are new to the organization and have just been onboarded. Although patients were considered throughout the entire process. Parents would be the primary users throughout the child’s life but could be handed off to their child once they reach high school. Thus it is important to set parents and their children up for success in the future.
Looking at pediatric clinics in the Twin Cities area as well as across the county, it was evident that Children’s Minnesota’s visual identity needed a serious refresh. Other pediatric clinics have a clear hierarchy and have visuals that break content up. Which was taken into consideration when updating the visual language. So it was important to create a design system that could be flexible with multiple languages, playful and straight forward when it need to be.
The final user journey was determined by the opportunity to cater to other groups and make the process of scheduling an appointment easier. Inherently, the target audience are returning parents who have used the system but have trouble navigating it.
The project challenged me to consider other end users besides the chosen target audience. In this way, the solution can cater to the wider range of users besides those who struggle with health literacy but serve as a way to make the experience of going to the doctor’s office more enjoyable and less stressful.