Doctory
The Basics
Doctory is a non-profit startup aiming to bridge the healthcare access gap in Pakistan and empower people to more efficiently navigate their healthcare experience. Doctory’s main product offering is a free phone service in which patients can call a general practitioner to receive routine triage and minor treatment, but they also offer an online search-based platform for users to search for doctors in their area.
Project Goal: Redesign Doctory's website to empower users to find high-quality, vetted specialists doctors and facilitate their own healthcare journey.
My Role: UX researcher, contributing UI designer, presenter
Project Duration: 2 weeks; January 2020
Other Team Members: 2 other General Assembly UXDI students
Tools Used: Axure RP, Miro
Research Methods
Our goal was to determine which doctor-finding search websites people use and trust, the extent to which they understand what medical doctors treat which body parts, what criteria people prioritize when searching for doctors, and whether people track the appointments they make.
Competitive Analysis & Survey
Our initial findings suggested that Zocdoc, a service that almost half of our 59 survey respondents reported using at least once, is the strongest competitor. It boasts many additional offerings that Doctory’s current site does not have, such as scheduling capabilities and a clean, intuitive interface that allows users to easily find what they seek and complete their intended task(s) on the site, and the feedback received from interviewees who use Zocdoc was overwhelmingly positive.
Usability Testing Existing Website
Testers noted that the landing page was cluttered and didn’t quickly convey the purpose of the site, the rating system on the search results page was confusing, and the filtering options were lacking appropriate customization. This led to a general mistrust of the site and its ability to accomplish the user's need.
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The search engine was also inconsistent and inaccurate — for the usability testing scenario, we asked participants to search for orthopedic doctors and psychiatrists were the top results that were returned. When asked to select a doctor based on a fictional scenario, one usability tester became frustrated with the process and said she would rather call Doctory’s hotline to find an available provider. When asked how likely they would use the service again, the average score was 6.5 out of 10.
We again asked participants to rate how likely they would be to use Doctory again, and got an overall score of 8.5 out of 10
Key Themes
Ultimately, my teammates and I solidified our redesign on three themes: to simplify existing content and layout, add valuable features, and entice more user engagement. In aligning both the business and user needs, Doctory must prioritize the usability of the site while encouraging new users to join and existing users to return.
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We also wished to revamp Doctory to accommodate user desires, which is why we centered Doctory’s website around a scheduling functionality that would allow users to find doctors and book an appointment in one convenient place, similar to Zocdoc. While this may be more of an aspirational than realistic add-on, we decided that creating a high-fidelity prototype featuring this capability would demonstrate its value to the client and could perhaps become a future-state goal for Doctory.
Ideation & Sketching
Due to the collaborative nature of this project, my colleagues and I decided to do some rapid ideation to jumpstart the design process. We did a "design studio" exercise in which each person takes one minute to quickly create and jot down an idea, cycling through a new idea every minute for 5 minutes. This is a quick and dirty way to get any and every thought down on paper without investing time or energy. You easily get a sense of what ideas are worth pursuing and which should be discarded. Using this method, my team was able to start piecing together the building blocks of how we were going to redesign Doctory's website and the specific features we wanted to include.
Usability Testing our Prototype
After our initial prototype was built, we conducted 6 usability tests to uncover any gaps we may have missed in the design and learn what worked and what didn’t. Luckily we validated that our designs were functional and mostly required only minor tweaks, such as improving readability, clarifying visual cues, and streamlining organization and layout.
Participants seemed especially enthusiastic about the member portal, which allows users to track their appointments and view automatically generated reminders notifying the user to schedule a certain routine appointment, such as a teeth cleaning or primary care check-up. Participants also liked the clean, minimalist aesthetic of the design, which my colleagues and I sought to maintain throughout our iterations.
We again asked participants to rate how likely they would be to use Doctory again, and got an overall score of 8.5 out of 10
Final Prototype
Next Steps
First and foremost, it's important to note that our research is inherently limited. We did not have access to interview anyone within Doctory’s current or target user base, which would ideally be someone living in Pakistan who faces medical challenges and may not be adept at navigating the healthcare system. Since all our designs were based on research non-inclusive of the target reach, the prototype must be vetted by people in Doctory’s target user base to ensure design decisions are being made with the target users in mind.
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If given more time and resources, I would focus the next phase of the prototype to:
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Reorganize the landing page so users understand Doctory’s mission and the services it offers
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Add metadata to doctor’s profiles to improve search optimization
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Add further filter features to the search results page, such as distance and language
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Consolidate the two rating systems (user generated and business generated)​