Seattle Children's Case Study
Bringing accessibility to scheduling urgent care appointments.
UX Research and Design
Problem
Confusion of the difference between going to the emergency department versus urgent care can become a costly mistake. Addressing health literacy and improving cultural competency may reduce such disparities in healthcare. Creating an accessible and simple website may relieve frustrations for parents trying to make appointments for urgent care at Seattle Children's.
Goal
Redesign parts of the Seattle Children's website so booking an urgent care appointment is more accessible.
Duration
5 weeks, 2019
Roles
UX Research
Team
Michelle Li
Skills
User Research
Usability Testing
Information Architecture
Wireframing
Prototyping
Solution
Simplifying Layout
With both a navbar and a sidebar, content hierarchy can become overwhelming and information can be missed.
Dropdowns Menus
Adding dropdown menus at the homepage puts less effort and commitment by the user, saving time.
Information Architecture
Restructuring so creating an appointment with urgent care is more immediate for the user.
Iconography
Serving as a universal language, icons can alleviate the frustration of navigating informationally heavy pages for non-english speakers.
Empathizing & Defining
Emergency Room vs Urgent Care
I began research by consulting Tiffany, an ER Nurse and Nurse Practitioner Candidate at Seattle Children’s hospital. From her experience, she has witnessed filled up emergency rooms. Because the urgent care is not open until after hours, appointments fill up extremely quick. As urgent care appointments are full, they are then directed to the emergency room. She noticed that a proportion of ER patients are minority populations, leading her to think accessibility to urgent care is an issue.
User interviews + Usability Testing
In order to better understand the problems surrounding accessibility in trauma care in individuals I conducted user interviews and usability tests with the current Seattle Children’s website. 3 of the 6 participants have had or have children that have gone to Seattle Children’s, so this website has been a touchpoint.
Key takeaways:
- Easier to be in contact with someone immediately, versus something automated.
- Extremely hard to find Urgent Care button, hierarchy and not responsive.
- Heavy information everywhere – especially types of clinics, when others may not know the difference
- Schedule an appointment is repeated – many pages have generally similar names.
Information Architecture
The ease of finding immediate care did not come naturally for users on the Seattle Children's website. To tackle this problem, I conducted an open card sorting session and moved any urgent care-related information higher up the structure of the website.
Lo-fi Wireframing
I mocked up what the ideal user flow would be for the redesign.
Exploring the website, the redudancy of 'booking an appointment' lost users. With the assumption that Seattle Children's to streamline pages, related pages were merged to avoid frustration.