Patient Intake Forms — a UX case study
Technology is changing the way we interact with each other. Many processes and tasks that required a long time to do in the past are now a matter of clicking a button and voilá!
As the public system incorporates technological solutions to big infrastructures, our experience as citizens should see that change too.
For this case study we are looking into how might we transform the end-to-end patient experience in public hospitals and clinics?
The Patient Intake Process
We chose to look into the patient intake process at healthcare organizations. We wanted to look into ways to help patients and healthcare organizations manage their wait times.
The theory was that if we could help patients fill out intake forms before getting to the clinic, we could reduce the patients’ wait times. Thus, providing a more enjoyable experience for patients and a more efficient experience for healthcare organizations.
User Surveys & Interviews
In order to test the theory we first had to get patient feedback. We decided to conduct surveys. A Lean Survey Canvas helped us come up with relevant questions. Ultimately we wanted to know if this was really an issue for patients.
The survey results showed that:
- 100% of people had to fill out intake forms when they got to the clinic.
- 70% of people took 6-15 min. to fill out the clinic’s intake forms.
- 70% of people found the intake forms easy to fill out.
- 60% of people had to wait 20+ min. to see their provider.
These results revealed that it took people quite a bit of time to fill out their intake forms, but the forms weren’t hard to fill out.
After analyzing the quantitative data we wanted to dive deeper and gather qualitative data. We started working on the questions for the user interviews based on the questions and answers from the survey. We interviewed 5 people. The goal was to better understand the users pain points when visiting their healthcare provider.
“It was very tedious and tiring having to write the same information again and again and again.” — Miranda
Pain Points & Opportunities
We now had a lot of user feedback and data to sift through. To organize the data we decided to use an Affinity Diagram. To identify design opportunities we used How Might We questions to ideate on the right problems.
User Persona
Once we had identified some pain point and design opportunities. We then wanted to narrow down who exactly we were building this app for. For this step we decided to create a User Persona. Meet Carly — Carly is a manager at a consulting firm. She is organized, punctual and is dealing with a chronic disease; which means she’s constantly visiting healthcare providers.
User’s Journey Map
Following the creation of a User Person. We then wanted to map out Carly’s journey when she visits her healthcare provider. This would allow us to better understand the Carly’s emotions during the journey. Furthermore, it would help us continue identifying design opportunities.
Problem & Hypothesis Statements
At this stage we had enough information to come up with a Problem and Hypothesis Statement.
Problem Statement: Patients need to find a way to see their doctor in a timely manner because wait time are too long.
Hypothesis Statement: Digitally filling out intakes forms will reduce patient wait times. We will know if the app worked if wait times are decreased by 30%.
Lo-fidelity Wireframes
We were ready to start generating ideas and iterations. We started by creating a low-fidelity wireframes in order to quickly sketch out few ideas.
We sketched a few different lo-fidelity wireframes and met to iterate and discuss what we should include in the mid-fidelity wireframes.
Mid-fidelity Prototype
We created the mid-fidelity prototype and used an application called maze to send the prototype to a vast set of users.
Overall the user feedback was good. The average time it took users to complete the prototype was 2 min. — this was a lot longer than expected. I think part of the reason it took users so long to complete the prototype was because we did not give users enough information for them to flow through the prototype’s “happy path”. As the designers of the app we understood the app’s flow, but users needed a bit more hand holding.
The Next Steps:
- Iterate the mid-fidelity prototypes based on user feedback
- Sync up with healthcare organization stakeholders to discuss their pain points
Conclusions
Transforming the end-to-end patient experience at public hospitals and clinics is a complex problem. There are a lot of moving parts, but taking the necessary steps to understand users and their pain points allows us to define the right problems to solve.
Thank You
I would like to give a big shoutout to my teammates Jelisse Silva & Veronica Diaz for the awesome work on this project.
