As part of a User Experience team of three designers, I was tasked with coming up with recommendations on improving an already existing web-based service for Doctory.pk.

Client

My client Doctory.pk providing a simple hotline number, where anyone can call in and get connected to a doctor right away. If the patient needs to be seen by a doctor in person, she or he gets a referral to the right specialist. 

Doctory’s other approach was to create a website for people to be able to contact the physician, but for some reason, the website didn’t get as much traction as the hotline. Doctory needed help in understanding the reasons behind that and finding a way to improve those numbers.

Understanding the problem

To get a better grasp of the problem, my teammates and I started with a user research. Thanks to the ‘good old’ UX process, we had enough tools in our arsenal to nail it. What we did:

• Heuristic evaluation of the current web-site

• Competitive analysis

• Screener surveys

• Phone interviews

• Secondary research

• Usability tests

Heuristic Evaluation

We compared Doctory’s web-site to ZocDoc — the most popular web-service for booking a physician appointment. This simple evaluation revealed several pain points Doctory could improve upon. Web-site lacked consistency of layout and design elements. Flexibility and efficiency of use could also be improved as well as aesthetics and minimal design.

Heuristic evaluation was a good start, but we needed more information from users. So we sent out a screener survey to find suitable users for our interviews and usability tests.

Screener surveys and interviews

Our key findings from the interviews we performed were:

Secondary research

Here we have to take into account that we didn’t have access to the actual users in Pakistan so we turn our sight from users to our computer screens and dug into secondary research. We felt that we needed more information, more insight into the situation in Pakistan. Our minds were filled with questions:

• What is the literacy rate of the population?

• What percentage of the population has access to the internet?

• How do people usually seek medical help in Pakistan?

Secondary research key findings:

Those insights showed us that both low literacy rates and low internet accessibility have led to a disconnect between Doctory’s online directory and its users.

Usability tests

Secondary research provided us with qualitative information about Pakistani needs and problems they are facing. Now we had a better understanding of the task in hand. But there was still so much to think about.

Series of usability tests showed us that there are several pain points Doctory needed improve upon:

• None of the users could figure out how to determine the proper doctor by only using the site

• Most of the users would choose the doctor based on the reviews. Doctory’s current review system was confusing.

• 5 out of 6 users mentioned that they would book an appointment online right here, but are unable to do so.

Now we had our hands full with facts and data. We were ready to ideate and prototype!

Wireframes

Clickable prototype

We started to build our mid-fidelity clickable prototype in Axure to usability test it.

 I was responsible for building a search-based user flow in Axure.It was my first time using this tool and I enjoyed learning it and overcoming challenges I was facing while learning! Click here to check out the prototype.

After the prototype was ready for the usability test we wasted no time — we tested it out and iterated on the feedback!

Usability tests showed that users liked the drop down menu with predetermined locations. But that made Sort by Distance -feature on Search Results page confusing for users, since they weren’t entering their current location. We decided to deprioritize Sort by Distance -feature.

Many users were choosing doctors based on the ratings, that’s why we decided to include ratings in search results. I also added a Sort by Rating -feature to help users to see only relevant results.

Our initial prototype had a montly calendar view. However, that wasn’t the most convenient way for users to see the availability of the doctor. According to the usability test results our users preferred a weekly view with all the times available at a glance. I implemented that feedback into practice

When our users went through the booking process and were forwarded to the Confirmation page, they were happy with the booking experience but would love to see a notification that email with booking confirmation was sent to their email address, so they don’t need to worry about remembering or saving the booking information. We added that notification according to the users’ feedback.

My suggestions to Doctory

1. To help with language berrier and low literacy rates ⇒ Applying a Visual Component: Macro Body Selector

2. Inability to Schedule an Appointment ⇒ Applying Scheduling Function on Doctor Profile

3. Inability to Find Doctors Closeby ⇒ Incorporate drop down menu of predetermined locations to be transparent to users about locations

4. Confusion with Review System ⇒ Take out Reputation Score and replace it with something more visually based, like Review Stars.

5. Written reviews would be good to supplement for those who can read.

My reflections

This project was a great opportunity to learn new tools and implement user experience techniques. It also made me think out-of-the-box looking for ways to understand users’ needs without having access to the actual users. I would like to thank Doctory and their CEO Maliha Khalid for allowing us all to learn while working on this meaningful project.

Lastly, I would like to thank my team mates Victoria Akman and anisa zaman for their dedication, creativity, team work and support during this project. You are a pleasure to work with!