BIU HEALTH
Reimagining Telemedicine for drug ordering and appointment scheduling.
THE PROBLEM
BIU HEALTH is a company that offers sevices that ranges from buying and selling of drugs, conducting medical laboratory diagnosis to one-on-one in-house sessions with health consultants. At some point down the line, they needed to scale and hence they wanted to have a mobile app with an experience as enticing and sensory like an in-person experience. Also due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, they decided to deliver all their services remotely through this Mobile App that should be availaible on both iOS and android. I was tasked with designing the whole Biu Health mobile experience to achieve company goals whith great user experience.
The COVID-19 Pandemic has highlighted more clearly than ever the fact that there is need for institutions to operate remotely, this obviously comes with its own set of challenges and one is the lack of face to face interaction. At this time, even managers worry about the very real possibility of a drop in efficiency, hence there is a wide range of factor to consider when building design solutions for products.
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For this product I followed a series of processes which I considered best to be able to meet certain requirements that could answer the team's problem statement and my idea here is that if I can follow the sequence of:
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- Defining the business need
- Conducting research to gain insight
- Analysing research outcomes and ideation.
- Creating information architecture and user flows
- Creating lo-fi prototypes
- Proceeding to create hi-fi prototypes
- Test
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I am not certain if this sequence of workflow would help me get 100% accurate outcomes for this product but I perceive it would give us perspective into achieving something good that meet business and user requirements.
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
12 weeks
MAKE OF THE TEAM
In a small team of 4, I was the UI/UX Designer
TOOLS
METHODS USED
User Interviews, Affinity Map, User Persona, User Flow, Site Map, Problem Statement, Sketching & Design Workshop, Prototyping & Iterating.
Paper Sketching, Figma, Adobe Photoshop, AdobeXD, FlowMapp.
OUTCOMES
Recent testings has proven that my efforts and work done on this project are not in vain haha.
Conversion rate has increased side by side with user experience.
THE NEW DESIGN
(A preview of the solution)
RESEARCH
To be able to efficiently build a telemedical product in the African marketplace, research is crucial and I am not taking that for granted anyways. Due to how this space has been all these years, telemedicine sounds new and virgin, as a matter of facts, Less than half of Africa's citizens (52%) – some 615 million people – have no access to the healthcare they need, the continent's quality of health services is generally poor so putting up a telemedical concept as a proposal isn't a bad idea afterall. The entire research process for this product exposed me to a lot of critical information that pertains to this space, it showed me the downside of using technology to reach and enhance people's healthcare system in these part of the world and I am able to develop solutions to match challenges that came up subsequently to make a breakthrough in this space.
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Here are the 3 scope of this study that gave me boundaries within which this research was performed;
Scope 1
My Solutions and Processes only targeted the African marketspace.
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Scope 2
I targeted users that fell within ages 16 - 65, and hence restricted my design process to this population strata. Note that this age range constitute the major part of the African population that makes use of mobile devices.
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Scope 3
I decided to build solutions for this project by exploring different methodologies, hence i tried as much as i could to avoid designing solutions based on assumptions.
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In Summary, this is basically what the loop of my design process looked like.
Since it is important to understand the problem we are trying to solve before making decisions, i decided to introduce the ‘5W1H research technique’ , a framework that is used when gathering information and investigating a problem. The advantage of this research technique is that It can help limit the time we spend on research while giving us as much insight as possible in an area we know nothing about. it also allows you to understand a potentially problematic situation by asking the right questions.
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In this project, 5W1H stands for:
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What? We want to build in-app solutions that allow people order drugs online, view their medical lab results and then schedule/book/have appointments with doctors and pharmacist;
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Who? BIU HEALTH customers between ages 16 - 65;
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Where? Africa;
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When? We want users to access biu Health services remotely in 2020.
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Why? We want users to have easy access to health services remotely and also scale up company.
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How? Users should be able to buy drugs and schedule appointments with Doctors seamlessly witth the App
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THE PROCESS
In the course of designing this African - Marketspace - targeted telemedical solutions, I kept asking myself questions like;
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How do i build a solution that would work?
How do i break through this barrier?
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Honestly speaking, i do not have 100% sure answers for these questions however they seem to help me sustain my passion for what I was building and they kept me optimistic for the future i was expecting.
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Upon research i discovered that there were lots of scepticism that surrounded the African space which came up as a result of diversity in socio-cultural ethics and values, people were so afraid to try new things, they showed enthusiasm however they lack courage to take actions.
From one on one user interview i am able to see that there is a way forward if only we can be able to break the 'barrier of conviction' through design.
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"Barrier of Conviction" is a term i use to describe a situation were people are willing to use a product, excited about the concept, understand their benefits upon participation but not willing to take the step forward due to previous stonghold ideologies or past experiences.
Here are a few observations we made after synthesizing the interview feedback
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Here are some questions too.
WHAT DO USERS WANT?
You could easily deduce that the user's intrest resonated around a few points and Based on what i learned from the research i continued the design process by exploring different concepts that focused on answering those user questions. Hence my goals were to build solutions that are:
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Easy to understand, and use
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Safe and secure to use.
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Efficient so users can get feedback easily and faster.
I took the best ideas i got and incorporated them into paper sketches.
We created a list view of specialised doctors and pharmacist that gives users the freedom of going through the Doctors' specialisation, proficiency, experience and everyother thing we might need to know about them.. the aim of this process is To help boost user confidence and trust when using the app.
Smooth onboarding user flow that gives users an overview perspective of the possibilities of the mobile application.
Notice that from the sketches below, I am able to ideate a possible list/directory presentation for doctors available for consultation in such a way that users can be able to view their certification, qualifications, history and personal details... I used this method to build confidence in the heart of the users and to end skepticism and fear because the users are able to see that these are not fake.
USER JOURNEY
Before I decided to create my wireframes, I opted to create a user journey of the app. I wanted to see how people would navigate the mobile App. I went through two iterations; before the low fidelity wireframe and before the mid fidelity wireframe. Conducting this task allowed me to see how many steps it takes to complete a task or get from point A to B.
TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK
PROTOTYPE AND LESSONS LEARNED
This assignment become one of brilliant importance and which means a lot to me. It became the first comprehensive project that I became entirely accountable for the achievement or failure of. This undertaking challenged me in approaches that reinforced my research, grew my empathy, and refined my layout skills.
In the beginning of this mission, I had lofty expectations that I might fast find a goldmine of profound insights that might right now form my designs. I found out that research can often be iterative, and it’s no longer a one-and-accomplished manner. It’s a feedback loop that permits you to accumulate little golden nuggets one by one. If you have the persistence to concentrate and wait, you’ll eventually reach that goldmine.
