Standard Care
Digital healthcare and landing page design for a start up healthcare company.
UI.UX
Alice Liu
Role:
Researcher, Designer
Team Size:
4
Date:
Nov 2021 - Jan 2022
Duration:
4 Months
Problem Statement
The increasing costs of employer healthcare are driving the substantial growth of the digital healthcare industry. More employers choose to take on all of their employee's health claims to reduce costs.
Point solution healthcare providers offer self-funded employers innovative and personalized experiences focused on a particular condition or disease, helping them achieve financial goals while boosting employee health and engagement. Compared to integrated platforms that provide a range of health plans, point solution providers like our client experienced difficulties selling their products and connecting with potential buyers.
Solution
Standard Care user dashboard is a multi-function platform that allows point solution providers to list innovative digital solutions. Point solution providers can receive requests from prospective buyers, upload real-time data reports to attract customers, and manage long-term partnerships with buyers.
Research Phase
1) Understand users' motivations to use a third-party platform.
2) Identify user pain points with a current platform or criteria for choosing a new platform.
3) Understand actions user take to complete their goals using a third-party platform.
Stakeholder Interview
I conducted a stakeholder interview with the founder of the company to gain a more robust understanding of the problems we are trying to solve and the business objective. We know from the interview that:
1) Target users for the new dashboard are small technology companies who provide point healthcare solutions. They sell their products to self-funded employers who take on most or all of the cost of benefit claims for their employees. Major competitors are Third-party Administrator (TPA) websites such as Collective Health and Castlight Health.
2) Previous User research has discovered that small tech companies experienced difficulties finding buyers and making sales. User research suggested that Request for Proposal (RFP) is the official document used to connect users with buyers.
3) Business goal is for Standard Care to increase revenue by providing a third-party platform for solution providers to sell their healthcare solutions.
Literature Review
To understand the actions users must take to sell point healthcare solutions, I reviewed white papers and organizational reports on the topic of Request for Proposal (RFP). This official document announces and outlines plans for a specific project that any healthcare facility plans to undertake. It contains six essential steps for users and buyers to complete to reach the selling goal. I converted these steps into user actions they must take to sell their products:
1) Viewing incoming requests
2) Contacting potential buyers
3) Managing established partnerships
Competitive Analysis
To understand the strengths and weaknesses of current solutions for users, I analyzed two competitor websites: Collective Health and Castlight Health. The goal is to identify relative patterns and features they offer to address similar user problems. Since the user dashboards for both companies are accessible only to certified partners, I focused my review on the user onboarding process and feature summaries.
Findings
Both competitors have established integrated healthcare ecosystems that connect point solutions providers with self-funded employers. During onboarding, users can see common features of the platform including 1) partnership management, 2) provider profiles demonstration, 3) two-way data place help with quick match between users and buyers.
There was no preview of pricing plans or incentives for the providers during the user onboarding process. It requires private company information to request a demo from both companies. Providers cannot see how it works for them before signing up.
Insights
One of the user pain points in using current platforms could be that it is difficult for solution providers to discover pricing plans and financial incentives, or that users are reluctant to submit private company information before knowing more.
User Interview
I conducted five in-depth user interviews with experienced healthcare experts who are familiar with the industry standards and the process of purchasing digital healthcare products. The goal is to understand user motivations, pain points, and user actions. We made an affinity diagram to analyze the themes in responses and look for patterns.
Questions examples
1) Could you describe your past experience selling a healthcare product?
2) What would or have motivated you to use a third-party platform?
3) What has made you frustrated about the selling process?
4) What would you like to know before partnering with a platform?
Key Insights
1) User's ultimate goal is to get requests from potential buyers and manage partnership with existing buyers.
2) Users currently use their own company website to make sells.
3) Users choose a third-party platform to avoid cold calls to buyers that "waste their times".
4) Users feel frustrated when resources are scattered and when information is overwhelming.
5) Users want to know how the platform is monetizing before making a commitment.
How Might We?
How might we help users save time finding and reaching out to buyers?
How might we help create a match between users and buyers?
How might we create an easy onboarding experience for users?
How might we disclose necessary information without overwhelming the users?
How might we help users showcase their success?
Information Architecture
We conducted five open card sorting to uncover users' mental models based on activities we created from the user stories. We made adjustments based on research findings before we created the information architecture. For example, research suggested that users grouped product-related cards separately with profile-related cards, so we add "Manage product" as a new, separate tab. The information architecture is used to illustrate the product's infrastructure, features, and hierarchy.
Visual Design
We started the iterative design process after we created the low-fidelity wireframes. We conducted the first round of usability testing with five users to examine the content and hierarchy. We gathered feedback from the testing and made adjustments before moving into a higher fidelity prototype.
Here are a few examples of how we iterated from the initial design:
The initial wireframe contains an item named "Manage RFP" that allows users to view incoming Requests for Proposals (RFP) from prospective buyers. Usability testing showed that a significant number of users, who are healthcare experts, found the name confusing as it failed to indicate the stage of a request. We changed the item name to "Manage Requests" on the high fidelity page.
A floating CTA leading to "consultation" was our initial solution to create an easy onboarding process. However, usability testing results showed that the CTA has unnecessarily high findability as a secondary function that resulted in increased cognitive load when users scanned through the screen. We moved it to the sidebar navigation to maintain the findability and decrease the visual hierarchy.
The initial wireframe failed to name the "data report" card. Usability testing showed that users would mistake the subtitle "engagement data" as the name of the "data report" card and interpret the "expanding" icon as a function to see larger graphs.
Interactive Prototype
Standard Care user dashboard is a multi-function platform that allows point solution providers to list innovative digital solutions. Point solution providers can receive requests from prospective buyers, upload real-time data reports to attract customers, and manage long-term partnerships with buyers.
View Incoming Requests , Manage Partnership
Onboarding Experience
I created the landing page for the onboarding experience of Standard Care's new dashboard. Vendors, at first sight, will see a blurb stating the company’s goal of connecting users and buyers. They will be greeted by a short tutorial video showing how it all works. Usability testing had shown that visual elements and color choice created feelings aligned with the company brand attributes: savvy and energetic.
Vendors can view requests and messages from their partners under the “partnership” tab. An expandable data place and a CTA button encourage vendors to upload real-time data about their cost-saving performance, current employer engagement rate, and other data to showcase their success. To encourage small businesses to update their data, I created a feature that tells the users how long it has been since the last submission under the CTA button.
Getting Requests for Proposal (RFP) can be as stressful as landing a job offer. We knew that users viewed getting RFP as the destination in using the platform from usability testing. In addition to managing incoming requests, making proposals, and tracking the progress of the proposals, I designed the empty state of the “Manage requests” page. The empty state has a Call to Action button that encourages vendors to upload data that will be visible on their profiles. Real-time data and proven success stories can help attract more potential buyers. In addition, the text reminds the buyers that even when they are not getting business, they can still relish the amazing financial incentives offered by Standard Care!
Usability Testing
Key Success Metrics
Task success rate on three flows: 1) Onboarding, 2) Profile Creation, 3) Partnership Management.
Perceived satisfaction
Error rate on each flow
Process & Impact
We initially found a higher error rate and low task completion rate (60%) on the partnership management flow during the first round of testing. Overall, the process had low learnability and required high cognitive loads for users to achieve their goals. We improved the prototype based on user feedback during the iterative design process, as indicated in the above section. By the end of the second round, task completion rates of the profile creation and partnership management flows reached 80%, while the onboarding flow had a 100% success rate. There was some observed confusion on specific features, such as the "add section" from the profile page. The final deliverable was tested and improved based on two rounds of testing. Even though there was no time for another round of testing, we made adjustments based on the feedback and were confident that the product created a satisfactory experience for users.
Style Guide & Pattern Library
Summary
Next Step
The final deliverables were handed to developers but have not yet been launched (2021). We planned to keep testing the prototype on users and make iterations for improvements.
What would I do differently
If we were able to access the dashboard of competitors' websites, I would conduct Competitive usability testing to explore their strengths and weaknesses further.
The current solution is adhere to the WCAG standard. I would still like to explore more Edge cases such as in the situation that users would like to end a partnership with a buyer.
