athenahealth ONLINE SCHEDULING REDESIGN
OVERVIEW
Athenahealth is an American cloud-based company that partners with hospitals and medical organizations across the country to help them optimize financial performance, medical records, revenue cycles, patient engagement, and care coordination services.
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My remote based project was research driven in increasing consumer engagement, aligning design with consumer design language, and increasing product usability. I was tasked with aiding in data collection and analysis that influenced my medium redesign of the consumer self-scheduling process.
Consumer scheduling is a tool that athenahealth has released to clients that allows patients to schedule appointments themselves rather than calling the practice's front desk.
Role
2 Design language audits
Heuristic evaluation
Data collection and analysis of 8 moderated user interviews
Medium redesign of consumer self-scheduling
Duration
Tools
Team
3 weeks
Figma
Mural
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Alyssa Peters - Senior designer
Chris Lovin- Lead designer
Jessica Mosqueda - UX designer intern
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DESIGN LANGUAGE AUDITS
I gained insights into the previous design language and also the current, more user friendly design language by conducting 2 design language audits. This aided my evaluations of consistency and standards, along with envisioning the future of the consumer scheduling process.
I found that the current system in place does not utilize the consumer friendly design language consistently and there is a need to create more consumer friendly components.
HEURISTIC EVALUATION
In order to gain insight into the overall experience of the current Consumer Scheduling process, I conducted a heuristic evaluation. I was especially considerate of:
Consistency and
Standards
Error prevention
Recognition rather than recall
Click on Heuristic Evaluation image to view original
After conducting a heuristic evaluation, I found that there were areas to improve process, design, and retention in patients and practices.
INTERVIEW FINDINGS
Our team was tasked with gaining an in-depth understanding of the users experience. We wanted to empathize with our users and explore their valued points of view.
While gathering data during 8 moderated interviews with stakeholders from a variety of practice sizes and account durations along with the senior and lead designers, I found that most practices had a balanced view on consumer scheduling.
Overall the practices were excited about empowering their patients to self schedule.
The practices understood that their practice has experienced growth because patients can schedule themselves.
Overall, consumer scheduling was a better process than what they have currently because it takes some weight off of the person in charge of scheduling.
Which meant that those practices knew the powerful impact that consumer scheduling had on their practices and patients. During a particular interview, a person that was in charge of scheduling said something that sparked my intrigue:
"Consumer scheduling is like a double edged sword."
This statement sparked my interest because the practices recognized the value in the current tool, but they had also realized there were areas to improve. They were also eager to share their pain points in hopes of improving a tool that is used daily.
PRACTICE PAIN POINTS
While interviewing different stakeholders whom are involved with customer self scheduling daily, I discovered their main pain points were patient work arounds and vague insurance form fields.
Current Views:
Patients not marking New or Existing patient type field correctly
No help with what qualifies as a New or Existing patient
Patients not entering insurance fully or correctly
Only when you hover over the information icon can you know what to input into the field
Patient confusion over vague fields
The field is required but not specific on what should be entered
PATIENT PAIN POINTS
According to an internal research document on gender equality, patients and clients have escalating concerns regarding the information and language used to collect certain data. Practices also discussed during their interviews that patients were wanting more customization in their searches for appointment booking.
Current Views:
Patients are expressing demand to change the form field Legal sex to Assigned sex at birth
Patients want to include X as an option in an Assigned sex at birth field
*No personal prounouns option*
Patients want the ability to multiselect and type in personal pronouns and have their pronouns displayed in a convenient location
Impact:
These patient pain point changes alone impact major accounts such as:
XXXXXX with a $6.7M annual revenue to athena
XXXXXX with a $196K annual revenue to athena
XXXXXX with a $60K annual revenue to athena
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There is an opportunity to improve patient retention, process efficiency, and provider retention; but most of all there is an opportunity to give individuals representation of who they truly are.
athenahealth PAIN POINTS
After speaking with multiple designers on different teams, I learned that athenahealth had observed its own design flaws:
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athenahealth would like to make the consumer self scheduling visual design language uniform to current standards.
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Currently there is no pagination or visual help showing patient progress.
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Patients would like to be able to search by practice location or choose a practice whose location is more convenient.
EMPATHETIC STATEMENTS
After conducting a heuristic evaluation of the current consumer self scheduling process, 8 moderated interviews with stakeholders, and utilizing athenahealth's prior research findings, I found myself asking:
How can we incorporate the consumer design language into the patient self-scheduling process?
How can we improve the customer's scheduling experience?
How can athenahealth be more gender affirming?
PROPOSED SOLUTIONS
Include horizontal stepper that reflects current visual design language
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Improve user flow by disabling form fields
Created customer customization option to set appointment preferences
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Created option for consumer to view open appointment types for that particular doctor at that practice
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Add an option to take a picture of current insurance card
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Changed First name to more inclusive First name used
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Make insurance fields more specific
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Add option to include multiple insurance providers
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Changed form field Legal sex to Assigned sex at birth
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Provided Pronouns form field as a multi-select and write in
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Asked more clarifying questions about insurance and policy holders
Displayed patient pronouns in easily accessible area. In this iteration, this information would transfer to the practices' patient files
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Displayed Doctor's full name and pronouns, along with reason for visit
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Review of reason for visit and symptoms
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Included consumer friendly illustrations throughout entire booking process
Created option for appointment information to be sent through text
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Created option for appointment information to be sent through email
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Changed wording on action button to clarify process was finished
PROJECT CHALLENGES
Time sensitive:
Wanting to create a heavy redesign utilizing other designer's research findings
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Update components:
Needing developers to create components using consumer design language
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Utilizing tool wisely:
Practices not using the consumer self scheduling tool to its full capacity
MEDIUM REDESIGN
Hi-fi desktop prototype redesign of athenahealth's consumer self scheduling tool. I created this prototype for demonstration purposes.
FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES
After presenting my designs to the UX department of athenahealth, they informed me of different design decisions that patients and practices would want in the future. Such as:
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Giving patients a more custom search experience, such as searching by a doctor's sex, practice location, and doctor reviews.
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Practices want an embedded list of existing customers to aid in accurate patient booking success and an embedded list of insurance providers that the practice accepts.
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Opportunity to design this process for mobile.