Health Buddy Case Study
Project Overview
Health Buddy is an app developed by the SingHealth Group that aims to give users convenient access to their health services and provide information such as medication details and their medical records.
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This was a project that I did with a team of five UX designers for our project at General Assembly Singapore, User Experience Design Immersive programme, where we worked on improving the design and functionality of the existing Health Buddy app to improve its features for their main user groups.
The Problem Statement
Users of the Health Buddy app need an easier way to complete their tasks efficiently, such as creating a new appointment and managing their dependent’s records. The current version is confusing for some users due its cluttered interface and the process of completing their tasks becomes tedious due to multiple log-ins and a complicated onboarding process.
My Role
I worked with a team of four others to conduct user interviews and was one of the UI designers to create the pages and rework the user's flow of using the revamped application.
Our process
Our process was initiated based on the Double Diamond Theory and SCRUM agile methodology, with one week sprints during our Discovery, Definition, Ideation and Implementation for this project.
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Here is the timeline breakdown of our project:
Stage 01 - Emphatise
What do we know?
Health Buddy was designed to be a complimentary application to aid SingHealth users in managing their appointments, place their medical requests and access health services they might require.
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However, we realised from our initial research of Health Buddy that many users had issues navigating the application due to the overwhelming elements on the initial home screen. Our team also discovered that there were too many navigation steps in our user’s flow, with multiple log-ins to Singpass for each task.
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We wanted to address the root of this problem in our Discovery phase when we did our user research and initial usability testing so we can uncover more of our user’s key frustrations.
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Our Users
With all the data we gathered from our user interviews, we generated two main user personas as our focus for the application.
Below is a breakdown of both personas:
Stage 02 - Define
After synthesising all our research and establishing our two mainpersonas, we established a problem statement for each individual persona. Then, we addressed them by coming up with “How Might We” statements to see where our opportunities are when coming up with our solutions
Pain points:
“I need a fast and efficient way to book and manage my medical appointments because I likes to plan my schedule properly to avoid wasting time on queueing and waiting.”
How might we...
• make it faster and more efficient for Beatrice to book and manage her medical appointments?
• help Beatrice avoid queueing and waiting?
• help Beatrice plan her schedule efficiently when she needs to go to a doctor’s appointment?
Pain points:
“I need an easy way to access and manage the medical needs of the people under my care so that I can fulfil my caregiving duties quickly and without fuss.”
How might we...
• help Catherine fulfil her caregiving duties in a quick and fuss-free manner?
• make it more intuitive for Catherine to access and manage the medical needs of the people under her care?
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Stage 03 - Ideate
Our team wanted to address the initial issues of the app’s main layout with the cluttered home navigation, while also focusing on our user’s main needs from the app itself. We redesigned the home page to only include the necessary elements.
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The main component we wanted to redesign was the reduction of information on the main page and condensing it to the key functions that our users need, which would be Appointments, Payments, Medicines and Reports. We also wanted a section that focuses on tracking your current appointment’s flow, so as to act as an aid for users who are confused on where to proceed after a certain section of their appointment has been completed.
User Flow
Lo-fi Wireframes
Stage 04 - Prototype
Stage 05 - Testing and next steps
Here is the before and after of the main home page screen of the application.
After our Hi-Fi prototype was completed, we did another round of Usability testing with the same 10 users.
Below are some of the comments from our users after testing was concluded:
General:
• Appointment progress bar is useful
• Features are intuitive to find
• App is cleaner and less cluttered
Payment:
• Thought having the payment split from yours and dependent’s billing was good
• Liked that there was a full breakdown of the payment on the app itself
Appointment:
• Recent places is useful
• Likes that they don’t have to
re-log to their Singpass again
Some improvements that our users wanted were:
• Make some of the information clearer for users
• Increase Font Sizes for Elderly users
After our iterations, we managed to address the key problems we wanted to tackle. Our current version addresses:
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The clutter in the application
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A seamless user flow with only one log in at the start using the user’s Singpass
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An efficient way to book the appointments and e-register via the application itself
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Ensure that the user can fulfil the caregiver’s needs and wants easily on the application
Based on SUS scores our users filled out during the usability testing, we noticed an improvement score of 21%, increasing our score from a 57/100 to a 78/100.
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Users found the app generally cleaner and easier to use, with the key functionality being very apparent and obvious to locate.
They could finish the usability tasks that we set for them easily, with all 10 of the users being able to accomplish all 3 usability tasks.
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Next steps:
After the 5 week sprint for this project, we did feel very accomplished at the work we did. We also understood that we had more improvements to implement on the application itself, such as:
• Custom font sizing
• Clearer text for to increase accessibility for users
• See if we can improve language use to prevent any medical jargon for being misunderstood
Reflection
Overall, I was satisfied with the team’s work, especially when we managed to tackle the key focuses we sought out to accomplish. Although there is always room for improvement for the project, I do believe we manage to create a better user experience for anyone using the new and improved Health Buddy application.
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This project taught me the importance of keeping to our time for our one week sprints. Balancing pace and perfection can be difficult, but that is where proper time-management and our weekly stand ups come in handy to keep everyone on the same page.
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For the next steps, I would introduce onboarding screens for first time users to aid them in starting out. We can also measure time spent on the app as well as well number of successful task between users using the updated version of the application.
Thank you for taking the time to read my case study.
Feel free to connect with me at asyrafrasid93@gmail.com or drop me a message via my LinkedIn.