Designing Mount Sinai: Booking An Appointment
Duration
3 months: Oct - Dec 2023
Type
Semester long course: User Experience Design
Role
Solo UX Researcher and Designer
This was a semester-long project as a part of my specialized UX Design Course where I chose to redesign the process of booking a doctor’s appointment for Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC using a design system created by me.
About Mount Sinai
Mount Sinai is New York City’s number-one hospital chain with eight hospitals around the city. As someone who has always been interested in the medical industry, I knew working on crafting the right flow for booking an appointment is a vital part of our society, and must be accessible and easy for every demographic, therefore, would be a great design challenge.
Problem
Users require a streamlined appointment booking process for accessing healthcare services. I aim to simplify the process by providing clear guidance on selecting the right doctor based on individual needs.
Empathize
In the home page, I found that the main issue was that there are too many entry points to booking/choosing a doctor that would overlap in purpose, and be repetitive and unnecessary — taking up a lot of digital real estate. This also would make the process super overwhelming, and difficult for users of a wide demographic to navigate.
Original UX & Problems
What each circle + number means:
1. “Find a Doctor”” = Research
2. “Request an Appointment” = Directly book
3. “Book Online” = Search & Refine
Mount Sinai App — Large space for web
4. “Find a Doctor” x2 = Search & Refine
5. “Choose a Location” = Hospital/Urgent Care
There are a total of 5 entry points to book an appoint/research a doctor on the home page.
The doctor search page’s main issue is that the filters/refine search is cluttered and legnthy, as well as a disorganised and overwhelming scroll of doctors to find.
I looked at two other well known hospitals in New York City and identified the key design decisions and limitations to the UX of both their home page and doctor search page.
Competitive Analysis
Define
Journey Map
From looking specifically at the needs and pain points (red/green stickies) explored in my journey map — I derived specific solutions that target those insights.
Solutions
Readjust the main navigation bar on the home page to remove repeated functions — making sure I focus on UX Writing.
The main solution I came up with is to Introduce the concept of a Doctor-Patient Match Quiz.
Simplify filtering & finding into a step-by-step process. which will help simplify filtering & finding into a step-by-step process.This match quiz can lead to a few recommended doctors and the option to explore and select manually — which is the page I will then generally clean up
The quiz will be both short (4 questions) and optional. It’s purpose is to simplify the process and match each attribute of desire a patient will have to their ideal doctor— So they essentially have to use less brain power, time and effort to partake in this inevitable process!
What is the “Doctor-Patient Match Quiz”?
User Survey & Card Sorting
Research for the Doctor-Patient Match Quiz
I created a survey asking users to rank what’s most to least important when booking an appointment at the doctor’s to help me organize the hierarchy of questions for my doctor-patient match quiz.
The results showed that people are most curious to know if a medical institution/practitioner carries their insurance — therefore, that would be the first question that appears in the match quiz. Then, it is followed by 3 other questions: If their preferred specialty is covered, their preferred date/time, and if the appointment is through Zoom or in person.
What was interesting is I also asked my participants to rank how important it is for them to have the option to manually select their doctor, however, it was never the first choice for any option. Due to this result — I decided to always have the option to exit the quiz if a user were to have a specific doctor in mind — who say, knows their medical history, or is perhaps recommended by someone else.
Design System
Following Atomic Principals
As I designed multiple screens, I created an atomic design system to utilize for my design process to maintain design and branding consistency. My style guide closely resembles the official Mount Sinai branding elements such as colors, typography styling, buttons, and other elements.
Ideate
Low Fidelity Sketches
Basic Outline for the Match Quiz
Search Page & Filter Bar
Most of the filtering, I kept the same. As I approached this project with the understanding that as a UX designer outside the medical field, there will naturally be knowledge gaps. There are reasons certain design decisions are made — some functionalities are essential, and the industry standards need to be respected. The filter requirements is one of those. There is purpose to these requirements, which I made sure I maintained, but presented in a way where I adapted UX trends that were optimal to usability, and to save space on the page.
Solution
Final Designs
In my final homepage, I was focused on how to simplify all the ways of navigating booking an appointment, and researching a doctor. The main issue of the original UX, was that there were too many overlaps. Now— Looking at my new design, lets go through (from top to bottom), the functions of each anchor point.
1. DOCTOR RESEARCH
2. DOCTOR-PATIENT MATCH QUIZ
3. DOCTOR SEARCH + REFINE
4. LOCATION SELECTION + URGENT CARE
