Intro

During the summer of 2021, I worked as a product design intern at Pulse Protocol. Pulse Protocol is a startup company with a first-of-its-kind software and marketing platform that gives doctors and hospitals a comprehensive solution to professionally manage and grow their medical travel businesses.

Through the internship, I was assigned to re-designing the mobile web version of the patient dashboard with a  senior product designer and other engineers. During the project, we were able to work closely with coordinators to interview and hear the behaviors of patients.

How Does Pulse Work?

The pulse patients are divided into Onboarding patients and Qualified patients. If onboarding patients submit their personal information, medical history, and select a doctor from the list that the coordinator provided, the patients become qualified patients.

But we have a problem with the onboarding stage. 

Problem

In the current mobile web design, the functions are working but not designed.

Result

There is a 40% decrease in conversion rating from onboarding to the qualified stage.

In other words, the onboarding patients are less active to submit their personal information, medical history, and selecting a doctor. WHY?

RESEARCH

Interview

Interview with coordinators

I conducted interviews with coordinators to know about what coordinators do, and patients' behavior. The reason I interviewed the coordinators is they contact 60% of onboarding patients to guide the onboarding system on the phone. So the coordinators know well about patients' behavior,  frequently asked questions, pain points.

Interview

Interview Summary

• Mobile web version users are having difficulty navigating the system.
  
• The conversation feature (chat) is the most important because the onboarding patients are submitting and uploading documents and information through the conversation feature(chat). But the patients are unsure about how to access the conversation feature.
• We have a wide range of target groups. So the accessibility is important for the senior target group.

RESEARCH

Design Critique

External and Internal Design Critique

After the interview, we shared our design with people who doesn’t know the pulse. We wanted to see their reactions, impressions, and how they think about the design. And we also had internal design critique ourselves to analyze the problem.  

External Design Critique

After the design critique, I knew different reasons why the onboarding patients were disappearing. I sorted it into different design principles. It helped me to navigate what we should have for re-design the concept.

Internal Design Critique

From the internal design critique, We have set up questions about and graded ourselves with impact level. And the result of the impact level was all Low.

Design Critique Takeaway

• Usability (External)
  For the seniors, the design was unorganized and unclear to guide them to the conversation thread.
  
  
• Reliability (External)
  For youngers, the unorganized design gave the impression of uncertainty, unprofessional, and hesitation to share their information and documents.
  
  
• Accessibility (Internal)
  From the internal design critique, the result of the impacts was all low. We found that inconsistent design, low readability, and lack of visual hierarchy, are from the design system which we don’t have yet.

RESEARCH

Current User Flow

Not only the design, but we also looked at the current user flow. When the onboarding patients log in, it goes straight to the dashboard. When the onboarding patients land the dashboard design in mobile, the patients start to struggle. Because the patients are unsure about where to tap. And in the dashboard, we don't have any information or data to show to onboarding patients. 

From the research, we learned reasons why we have a low conversion rate from onboarding to qualified patients. Based on what we have learned, we wrote the challenge statement.

Challenge

Our current design is far away from reliability, accessibility, and usability. And those problems led to a low conversation rating of patients from onboarding to the qualified stage.

Solution

Re-design mobile web for onboarding patients

HOW?

We decided to focus on 3 design principles.

RE-DESIGNED

Sitemap

For easier usability, we decided to re-structure the user flow. What we noticed from the current user flow, the onboarding patients aren't getting any information from the dashboard, because we haven't got any information from them yet. So we delete the dashboard for easier usability.

Instead, the onboarding patients will have the conversation thread right after the login. The reason is we want to make users focus on the conversation thread and upload their documents and select a doctor to make an immediate result.

RE-DESIGNED

Progress Bar

For the solution the accessibility, we decided to have a progress bar on the conversation thread.

From the progress bar drop-down, the onboarding patients can check and submit different requests to complete to become qualified patients. The users can tap the drop-down to go back to the conversation thread when they have questions for their coordinators.

RE-DESIGNED

Design System

Through the design system, we tried to solve the reliability problem. In the current design, the onboarding patients are having difficulty recognizing the system and navigation. More importantly, from the design critique, we learned that the current design doesn't provide reliability to patients. 

RE-DESIGNED

Final Design & Prototype

What I learned

During the internship, It was time for me to think again about how to design impact users.

I learned the importance of a design system. The design system is an important infrastructure to build a brand. It contains the brand identity, principles, and practices.
 
With the design system, the designers and engineers can work faster with consistent design. From the brand’s perspective of view, it will elevate the brand value with user reliability.