Provider Finder
UX Research + Design / Mobile Web Application
project overview
Teammates:
Alex Morales (Designer), Sara Ohlgren (Designer), Adam Kneisler (Software Architect), Tony Frey (Chief Technical Officer), Will Ashe (Sr. Front End Engineer)
Tools:
Figma, Trello, SurveyMonkey, Adobe Illustrator
Timeline:
5 weeks
About Embold Health & Provider Finder
Embold Health is the parent company of Provider Finder. Through applying rigorous analysis to millions of medical cases, they identify providers who deliver high-value care across the United States.
Provider Finder is the product that we worked on; it is a search tool that enables consumers to find high-quality physicians.
The design is being used by Walmart and other Fortune 500 companies and will eventually be a tool open to the public.
What problem are they trying to solve?
“More than $600 billion is spent on unnecessary medical care each year in the United States.
Unnecessary care puts stress on patients, their families and our entire health care system.
In the worst cases, patients experience complications and further illness from medical interventions they did not need.”
— Daniel Stein, Embold Health CEO
planning & goal setting
Kickoff Meeting
At project kick-off, my teammate Sara and I prioritized creating a good relationship with our stakeholders. It was essential for us to understand the work they had done on Provider Finder up to that point and define clear goals for what they wanted from us in this project. We understood that ensuring a good relationship with our stakeholders would be integral to the project's success.
They were building this version of Provider Finder for Walmart. They have plans to open up this platform to the public, but for now, they wanted to focus on Walmart, given they were their main client at the time. Our design was going to be used by all of Walmart's 2 million-plus employees.
After a successful kick-off meeting, Sara and I began working on how to best approach our research. To start, we focused on two broad questions that we believed would help us understand how to best help our users.
Research Focus
What makes someone trust what they read online?
What factors matter most when it comes to finding a doctor?
research
User Interviews
We conducted a total of 8 user interviews. In these interviews, we covered a lot of ground to learn about how they access the web, how they feel about healthcare, etc.
Given that Provider Finder uses data analytics to recommend doctors, a key research goal we had was to learn about what makes someone trust what they see/read online.
We received consistent answers throughout. Here are some notable responses:
"What makes you trust something you read online?"
"Thorough, thought-out responses from someone with multiple reviews."
"I often don't trust online reviews of doctors because I would never think to leave a review for one unless it was negative."
"I consider who publishes the information and who owns it, and I look at the sources listed."
Survey
Participants are retail employees all living in the US between the age range of 19-61 years old.
We sent out a survey that was completed by 23 participants. All of them being retail employees between the ages of 19-61.
We found that what people look for most in a physician are location and availability. They want someone they can see soon and get to easily above all other factors.
To our surprise, we found that online reviews and recommendations matter the least. The reason being that there are not trustworthy (unbiased) resources currently available, so users don't put much thought or value into them.
articulating insights
Close
First, consumers are looking for a doctor who is close and can see them within two weeks. They value convenience and immediacy above other factors.
Credible
Second, consumers need credible ratings and recommendations. They have trouble finding unbiased platforms to help them make healthcare decisions, and they want assurance that the information they receive is backed by a credible source.
Current
Third, they expect the information on a website to be accurate and up-to-date. If it’s not, it leads to a frustrating experience when making an appointment.
Personas
We used our research to create 2 user personas. Each one is based on the two main use cases we expect users to want to use Provider Finder.
Des
Our persona, Des, is based on the use case of someone searching for a specific physician’s name. She has received a referral for a knee replacement from her primary care physician and wants to verify that this doctor is in-network.
Her pain points are when making appointments is difficult, and she also doesn’t trust online reviews.
She’s looking for someone local, and she needs an intuitive website where the information is displayed clearly.
Leo
Leo is based on the use case of someone searching for a specific specialty. He and his family recently moved to a new city and need to find a pediatrician for their two daughters. They want someone close, with a high rating, and who has a good bedside manner.
His pain points are being new to the area and not knowing where to get trustworthy information.
He’s looking for an easy way to browse and save results and find a source of objective truth to help him make his decision.
Design Goals
Establish Trust
Reinforce the user that the metrics & ratings they are using to make their decision are backed by comprehensive medical analysis unique to Provider Finder.
Guide to In-Network Care
Guide & build a narrative with the user throughout the process, making them feel that “warm & fuzzy” feeling of finding exactly what you’re looking for.
Information Hierarchy
Create an experience that allows users to accomplish their goals with minimal friction & maximal confidence that they’re in the right place.
Simple Interface
Users want something easy to interact with: prominent calls to action & navigation.
design v1
Landing Page - v1 Iterations
Our main goal with this page was to make the user feel like they were in the right place and make key features prominent. In this case, it was the search tool.
In this sketch, we were playing with the idea of having the button shift down to narrow the search with subcategories.
Here we have a low fidelity digital wireframe where we’re using it to help define our spacings and margins.
Here we were trying to figure out a way to make it easier for users to learn about how Provider Finder works, reinforcing they’re in the right place.
Search Page - v1 Iterations
It was an important goal for us to create a narrative with our users to guide them through the process of finding the right care.
We wanted to make the Search page a one-stop-shop to get the right results in front of them.
Here in this digital version you can see that we would ask for their location, then ask for their specific search term, and in case they weren’t sure what they were looking for, we had a taxonomy list of all medical specialties.
Profile Page - v1 Iterations
When designing the physician profile page, our most important design consideration was around information hierarchy. We wanted to make sure we displayed the information in an order that would be meaningful to our users.
In our first sketch, you can see that we’ve placed the rating at the top, followed by the contact information, and placed a breakdown/explanation of the rating at the bottom of the page.
When we digitized the design, we added icons to show whether or not a physician was Embold Verified and accepting new patients.
We gained clarity from one of our stakeholders about which pieces of information we would be able to display for the doctors. At this point, we started solving for one specific user need: the ability to keep track of their search.
This iteration of Provider Finder would not give users the ability to make a profile because Walmart employees would access the site through a portal on Walmart's internal employee platform. We needed another way to save a doctor’s information. So we created these share buttons to allow users to text or email a doctor’s profile to themselves or someone else.
Out of Network - v1 Iteration
In most cases, users will only be directed to in-network care, but there is one case where users may find a physician out of network. Remember Des, our persona, has received a referral and wants to verify that the physician is in-network.
design v2
Landing Page - v2 Iterations
After the first round of testing, we got feedback that although our users value seeing a rating for physicians, they didn’t know what the ratings meant. We wanted to find a way to quickly introduce the user to our metrics and analytics, and that’s what we tried to do here in this image, but we realized that we were hiding the search by category feature.
This is what we eventually landed on for our design of the landing page. We put “Why Provider Finder?” prominently underneath the search tools, so it’s still easy to access. And we decided to change the category section buttons to squares instead of rectangles because we realized that would work better when we moved to our desktop version of the design at scale.
Search Page - v2 Iterations
After usability testing, we found that some users thought the taxonomy list was necessary to interact with to get to the results page. We decided to turn the list into a drop-down menu to not overwhelm the user.
Here on this image, you can see the taxonomy list opened up. You’ll also note that we added copy to the components. This is where we were trying to build that narrative with the user. Our goal with asking the user, “What can we help you find?” and “Where can we help you find it?” was to establish a helpful tone, one that makes you feel taken care of.
Ideally, using machine learning, this would adapt to what the user is typing in and not sound as vague.
Profile Page - v2 Iterations
We’ve made it even more prominent whether a doctor is recommended, in-network, and accepting new patients. We’ve also moved the rating breakdown to the top of the page, as usability testing showed us that users wanted to see why physicians were rated the way they were upfront and didn’t know to click the jump link to see the rating breakdown.
The issue with this version was that the green and red icons evoke an emotional response to the profile. We wanted to avoid that in consideration of both the user and the physicians themselves.
After discussing it with our stakeholders, we decided on this final version, which uses the Embold Blue instead to keep things in a neutral tone.
Out of Network - v2 Iteration
We found from usability testing that users were getting stuck in this part because the call to action to find a physician in-network wasn’t prominent enough, so we put it higher on the hierarchy.
prototypes
Task Scenario 1:
You went to your doctor and received a referral for knee surgery with Dr. Drake Ramore, an orthopedic surgeon. You want to make sure Dr. Ramore is in-network and a quality physician. Find Dr. Ramore’s profile and verify that information. If he is not in-network, find a physician who does meet that criteria and call their office to make an appointment.
You are looking for a physician who:
Is in-network
Has a high rating
Is accepting new patients
Task Scenario 2:
You recently moved to Kansas City, MO, with your spouse and two young daughters (twins, five years old). You’re looking for their new pediatrician. Your previous pediatrician was a woman whose practice was less than 2 miles from you. You loved your previous one and would like to find someone just as great. Your spouse has put you in charge of finding your next pediatrician. They would like to review the pediatrician’s profile and information before you make an appointment.
You are looking for a physician who:
Is within 3 miles of your home
Female
Has a high rating
moving forward
1 - Further Testing
The first next step we’d like to get to is further testing, particularly A/B testing. We have a few iterations of some of our designs that we would like to test to see what indeed is the best option to accomplish our mission. We’d also like to conduct further usability testing with an older demographic (ages 50-65).
2 - Build Responsive
Second, we’d like to build out the rest of the screens in both desktop and tablet dimensions as we progress towards making Provider Finder a fully responsive website.
3 - Integrate Chatbot
Third, our stakeholders love the chatbot idea and see immense value in how helpful it could be. This is a conversational version of our guided search. We want to figure out how to seamlessly integrate the chatbot with the rest of the site.
4 - Design Non-MVP Features
We’d like to build parts of the site we didn’t use in this MVP version. Such as building the glossary of terms and fleshing out the UI.
Summary
As this case study comes to a close, I’d like to summarize Embold Health’s original mission and what we did to help them achieve it.
Embold Health’s goal is to help consumers find high-quality medical care through Provider Finder.
We approached that problem by conducting user research and testing to uncover how consumers search for a doctor and where they put their trust.
We believe we’ve achieved this with an intuitive design that highlights the data and credibility that sets Provider Finder apart.