Next step & reflection

I've enhanced empty states to spark curiosity, implemented family mode for remote treatment monitoring, and added lively animations to make note-taking more engaging.

Through extensive usability testing and user feedback, I improved our health app. It's gratifying to see it help kidney failure patients manage their self-treatment and journey to recovery. This project taught me that empathy is crucial for designers to understand and meet users' needs effectively.

User test Result

The user testing included 10 patients and 10 clinicians. The testing plan involved various tasks, and feedback was collected afterward. I selected error rates and Net Promoter Score (NPS) to assess users' comprehension and satisfaction with our app, serving as key indicators of design success.

Error rates

9/10 of patients completed the right paths of 5 tasks we created successfully without errors.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Our average rating for the question "How likely is it that you would recommend our product to a friend or colleague on a scale from 1 to 10?" was 9, demonstrating high user satisfaction with the app.

Other feedback

10/10 of doctors and nurses provide positive feedback that the app helped them reduce their workload.

ROLE

Product designer

TIMELINE

6 months

TEAM

Product Manager, a team of 2 engineers, Myself as Product Designer

PROCESS

UX Research, Information Architecture, Prototyping, User Testing, Product Strategy, Visual Design.

Background

Task

Outcome

Over 1 million kidney failure patients are found to be depressed, and there is currently no effective way to manage their treatment data while they are simultaneously busy with their daily lives.

Develop an intuitive app focusing on tracking patients' daily body metrics and treatment progress.

Startup secure $600k in pitch funding

Idea 1:

Rack component

View all info at one glance

Too much information

Idea 2:

Carousel component

The interface is clean

Requires extensive scrolling

 Idea 3:

Landing + detailed page

See the latest value only

More info on the 2nd page

Prototype

Uppermed App was designed to make it easier for patients to track their treatments by providing a dashboard that collects data and trend charts that display the data's progression while also enabling seamless communication with care providers through a chat function. This makes treatment management easier for patients.

After identifying the pain points and needs of patients and hospital providers, I aimed to find a better way to foster communication between patients and clinicians and for patients to manage their treatment data conveniently. I proposed three design directions to address these issues.

Empower patients to manage their treatment schedules independently, reducing the burden on hospital providers

Improve communication between care providers and patients

Track patient treatment progress for improved care management

Design goals

INTERACTION IS NOT INTUITIVE

BEFORE

AFTER

The detailed data is an expanded card to view and make the info overloaded on the same page.

The chat function is important and commonly used, but was hidden in the account tab. It should not be hard to find it.

The time picker for “today” was not obvious enough.

CATEGORY IS HIDDEN

On this screen, the main 4 categories data are hidden in the dropbox. It is not very intuitive to see all categories at first and is hard to switch to others.

This lack of clarity made it challenging for users to navigate seamlessly between different categories, leading to confusion and contributing to user drop-off issues.

BEFORE

AFTER

I tried to create the most intuitive and simple structure of this app. The dashboard page is where users can view the most important values and trends. Users can also upload the new data and contact clinicians directly.

Site map

The problem

Patient Burden

Manually recording body fluid balance, blood pressure, and body weight on paper four times a day is time-consuming and burdensome for patients.

Provider Inefficiencies

Healthcare professionals encounter difficulties in effectively monitoring patient progress, especially during in-person clinic visits.

Hard communication

Traditional patient-healthcare team communication lacks efficiency, relying on phone calls or third-party apps without a systematic approach.

Difficulty in Treatment progress management

It's challenging to track treatment progress using traditional paper-based methods and to record daily treatment data.

Who are we helping?

I developed a questionnaire to better understand the perspectives and challenges of potential users, yielding 20 survey responses and conducting 5 user interviews. From these insights, target users were found to be patients who are 40 - 80 years old.

40% of patients are depressed during the treatment, seeing the chart helps motivate them.

Chat system for patients to contact hospital anytime

Dashboard

Detailed page

Trend

Notetake

Chat

A multi-layer design (landing + detail pages) can help segregate the complex information and help users digest and navigate data.

75% of patients say they easily forget their daily treatment details. Having a collection of notes helps them have productive conversations with doctors.

DESIGN ITERATION

After discussing the wireframe with PM and developers and confirming the structure aligning with the requirements, I started to design the first version of hi-fi design. I tested 10 users with clickable prototypes and got feedback from them and made the iteration. Furthermore, I verified the accessibility of color and font with WCAG guidelines during the iteration, to ensure that elderly users can easily read the content.

"Got NPS score 9 in final design's usability test!"

Jacky Wang

55 / Male

Details

Peter, aged 40, transitioned from being a taxi driver to a new career path due to illness. He is a father of two children under the age of 18.

Inconvenient to record body data 4 times a day

Occasionally forgets to check in at the hospital

Challenge

Improve communication of symptoms and challenges with doctors.

I feel more empowered to manage my treatment progress.

Need

Ideation

I explored design options and developed three dashboard concepts inspired by competitor research and user’s feedback focusing on simplicity. Before moving to the next step, I conducted a user test with 10 participants and the 3rd idea was selected for further development with the most votes from users.