Purcell

A medical device app to help asthma patients manage their disease

Timeline

May - June 2023

The Problem

The Solution

Project Type

Industry Design Internship with a medical device startup

Role

UX Research, competitive analysis, affinity mapping, wireframing, high-fidelity mockups, prototyping, user testing

Over 8 million people in the UK have been diagnosed with Asthma, and rely on inhaled medication to manage their disease. Many people struggle to stay on top of their medication, leading to increased symptoms and excessive doctor office visits.

Purcell Global is a medical device startup company that pairs a smart inhaler with a comprehensive device management and telemedicine app. The app aims to reduce unnecessary office visits and help patients manage their disease. With onboarding and navigation functions already built, we created a comprehensive telehealth section for appointment scheduling, doctor-patient messaging, and automatic inhaler refills.

Understanding the User

Coming on to the project, the company had already completed comprehensive user research, including interviews with asthma patients, national asthma studies, and testing of the inhaler. With this information already collected, we jumped straight in to creating user personas and understanding the problem space.

User Personas

Using the supplied user research, we created 2 user personas to direct our designs. These included “the anxious user”, who was compliant with their medication but suffered from anxiety about their condition, and the “busy bee”, who struggled with compliance and needed an external push.

Competitive Analysis

We completed competitive analysis on 4 companies within the telehealth realm, including TeleDoc, My Chart, ResMed, and Dr IQ. We determined that simple and inviting UI, options for video and voice calls, comprehensive health records, and a triage procedure were the most important elements to incorporate into Purcell. With these elements in mind, we moved to HMW statements.

How Might We

  1. How might we effectively screen patients for respiratory vs non-respiratory medical needs for telehealth appointments to better specify reason for visit?

  2. How might we easily allow patients to create, reschedule, and cancel telemedicine appointments with physicians to allow flexibility?

  3. How might we allow patients to easily access their telehealth medical history to stay on top of their asthma?

  4. How might we intuitively connect patients with doctors when they require care?

User Flows

Once we wrote out our HMW questions, we moved on to wireflows for the most critical functions. We focused on scheduling and cancelling telehealth visits, attending appointments, messaging the physician, and viewing health records.

Sketches

With wireflows complete we moved on to sketching. Taking inspiration from existing apps from our competitive analysis, we emphasized simplicity with clear CTA buttons.

Mid Fi Wireframes

After meeting with stakeholders, we moved on to mid-fidelity wireframes. The goal was to flush out existing designs and work out the more complex visit scheduling flows. Since we had an existing design system to work with, it was easy to apply common styles in our designs.

Prototype

User Testing

Using our high-fidelity screens we created a click-able prototype of the telehealth features, which enables the user to go through appointment, health record, and prescription refill flows.

We conducted 5 moderated user tests with the prototype to assess usability. The main feedback we received was:

  1. There should be a phone call option as well as a video call option

  2. What constitutes an emergency?

  3. There is some confusing in scheduling a doctor's visit, especially regarding the date and time options

  4. What medications were changed post visit?

Following testing, we made updates to the UI to include a video/voice call option, updated the health screener to simplify the responses, reworked the appointment confirmation and post-appointment screens, and updated the prescription refill flow to reflect user feedback. Additional testing will be needed to assess the impact of these edits.

Hi Fi Screens

After running a feedback session with stakeholders, we created high-fidelity mockups. Designs were audited for consistency and we reworked the telehealth screener for usability. We also added graphics, made CTA buttons more prominent, and aligned all components to the style guide.

Next Steps

Wrapping up the project, we came up with a list of recommendations for the future design and development of the app. These are:

  1. Conduct further user testing on the telemedicine feature

  2. Build out remaining MVP features

  3. Create a cohesive homepage and flow

  4. Unify all designs into one design system

  5. Hand off to developers

Lessons Learned

This project was a great experience and was a valuable learning opportunity. My biggest takeaways:

  1. Set clear expectations with stakeholders, push back on feature creep

  2. Delegating tasks is critical when working with a team

  3. When using design tools, cater to the lowest experience level on the team

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