Healthcare network with hospitals, urgent care, and medical facilities
Design the ideal future state experience for patients of the healthcare provider.
2018
6 months
Service & Interaction Designer
Service Design Lead, Visual Designers, Account Director
The Challenge
During my time at Fjord a part of Accenture Interactive, I worked with a Healthcare company with several hospitals, medical offices, and urgent care facilities based in the Northeast to identify the future experience for the patient. The client had not typically taken a patient-first or human-first approach to designing products and services and hired our team to help identify innovative areas to improve and grow.
Our Objective: to identify the ideal end to end future experience for patients and the trends for the future of the industry.
The Solution
After a series of discovery ideation and co-creation activities, the team created a future north star vision experience for a connected patient experience.
The Process
Research Activities
Observational Research
We traveled to several of the client's facilities. Some of the facilities staff were aware of our visit and we were encouraged to shadow and ask questions. Others we visited without staff awareness of our role and even went through the patient experience for multiple urgent care facilities.
Contextual Interviews
We conducted qualitative research across several states. We did a sample mixed with patients in the medical providers footprint and outside. We visited each patients home for a 90-minute interview and scheduled the interview before a doctors appointment to ride along with the patient and understand their routine related to obtaining healthcare.
Stakeholder Workshops
We conducted workshops with the several departments for discovery and ideation.
Research Findings
We found three key themes:
Disconnected Experience
The patient experience is disconnected. Patients do not feel loyal to medical providers, especially the client. This is because there is a lack of familiarity each time they visit the medical provider. Even if they are in the ecosystem they are constantly asked to provide information and fill out extensive forms.
Caretaker Burden
The biggest challenge people faced is having to be a caregiver for a sick family member. We heard a lot about parents that became ill and their children had to care for them while keeping up with their regular necessary life tasks such as caring for their own children and working full-time. The current system doesn't support the caretaker.
Lacking Empathy & Transparency
The Healthcare industry as a whole leaves patients feeling hurt and confused. There is no clear way to understand pricing and costs associated with care. Patients frequently have interactions with doctors and staff that make them desperate to stay away from healthcare.
Our Objective: How might we reimagine the patient experience to provide a connected experience for patients and caregivers that promotes empathy and cost transparency.
Synthesis Activities
Affinity Diagraming
After our research efforts, we would cluster and pull themes from the interviews.
Experience Mapping
Using the insights gained through interviews, we create a journey map for the customer experience
Ideation Activities
Crafting the Narrative
Using the insights gained through interviews, we create a journey map for the customer experience
Wireframing and Prototyping
Our team worked on a series of prototypes spanning fidelities. The experience was tested and shared with the client for feedback throughout the phase.
Sitemap
I created a whiteboard and eventually digital sitemap to keep track of the digital experience.
Co-creation workshop
We invited patients, doctors, and stakeholders and separated each into a mixed group of participants. We had a table for each flow in the connected experience and provided prototypes and worksheets to demo and get feedback on the proposed future experience.
Recommendations
To showcase the research findings and concepts designed we worked with a production company providing a script and high-fidelity mockups. The concept video was intended to provide stakeholders a method to communicate the north star future vision easily and bring along the organization.