UX/UI Design - Healthcare Startup
The healthcare startup, DoctorHere, had a plan to create a new product which is a total healthcare service for patients with chronic diseases
Context
DoctorHere is a healthcare startup with telemedicine services. The service has been active in the Korean and U.S. DoctorHere wanted to create a new service focused on the U.S. healthcare market and planned to develop a new product that allows patients with chronic diseases to improve and manage their health condition.
My Role
I had 3 priorities as a UX/UI Designer. The first was simplifying the existing telemedicine service app's design. The second was planning and leading UX research for the new service with complete autonomy, and the third was establishing communication with an outside company to increase efficiency of the new services design.
Achievement
1. Improvement of Telemedicine Service - Existing Service
The company did not have a proper IA (Information Architecture) for the existing service. If I wanted to look at the app structure, I had to look at the Figma file of wire frames. The first thing I did to check the problems of the existing app was to create an IA while exploring the app and pressing all the buttons. Although it was a work method that went backwards, it was necessary to understand the overall service and see the big picture.
Although it was a work method that went backwards, I was possible to understand the overall service and see the big picture through the work of creating an Information Architecture. The existing app, viewed through IA, identified unnecessary pages and overlapping steps at a glance. Based on this understanding, I suggested the direction of app improvement to reduce users' needless workload.
2. Research for a new product
The new service targeted the U.S. market, but the team only had interviews conducted with Koreans living in Korea. I started the research by looking for interviewees who could be potential users in the US. Through additional interviews, we discovered pain-points and verified opportunities in the US healthcare industry, especially in regard to chronic disease management. Our next step was creating three user journeys: one for a persona who has been newly diagnosed with a chronic disease, one who has been managing a chronic disease, and the final being one who has failed to manage a chronic disease.
Through this process, I concluded that our main target should be someone who is newly diagnosed with a chronic disease and doesn't know how to manage it. The patients managing chronic diseases already had management methods that worked for them, so it would be difficult to induce them to switch to this new service.
After researching, we created a new information architecture and started making drafts of the home screen of the new service.
3. Communication with a collaborative company
DoctorHere is a Korean startup with 80% of its employees working in Korea. I worked in the New York office and was dedicated to communicating in design with our partner, Cerbo, an electronic health records management company in the United States. We worked with Cerbo to test the fast MVP on the market, and in the process, checked whether the existing tools, functions, and designs provided by Cerbo could be modified to suit our service.
Takeaway
As a second project related to the healthcare industry, it was an opportunity to be more interested in the field. The main reason why I joined the startup was because I thought that the telemedicine business had more potential after Covid-19. The complexity of the project has increased as it has decided to target the U.S. market, not Korea, and provide services from treatment to management for patients with chronic diseases. Even if the same chronic disease is targeted, cultural differences and differences in medical systems in both countries inevitably create different needs. Through trial and error, I realized again that clarifying targets is important for design research and that the systems and cultures that are rooted in society are a vital factor in determining the direction of business development. In addition, due to the nature of the ecosystem of startups, there were many things that had to be done simultaneously and urgently. This was also a factor that hindered and delayed research, but it was also a greater motivation to take charge of many tasks and exert influence.