This project was in collaboration with a large medical insurance provider in the Pacific Northwest. Our goal was to increase the rate that at-risk populations seek preventative and responsive medical care.
Populations who experience judgement in medical settings like people who are, HIV positive, LGBT+, obese, or otherwise are minorities, avoid seeing medical providers, even when they may need to. This avoidance of care costs both patients and insurance companies. We set out to find a solution that would ensure patients had confidence that their doctor would be right before setting foot in their office.
Final and simplified data flow for the find a doctor experience.
Doctor interaction flow for filling out their profile, click to enlarge
Patient system flow for on boarding user information
Our design has two ways to edit preferences for doctors, the first introduction is a questionnaire that is seen upon first log in or accessed through the find a doctor landing page. The second is pop up menus that show the same options on the results page.
Selecting clinical expertise for the desired doctor (e.g. podiatrist, general practitioner, internal medicine, diabetes)
Identifying the way a doctor should approach care.
Selecting the language the doctor should speak and their proficiency level.
Choosing the communities and identities the doctor should be knowledgeable about.
Results screen
I researched what makes a successful patient-doctor relationship, above all the need to not feel judged surfaced. Patients who feel judged are less likely to seek medical care, both for emergency and preventative health.
We found most services focused on concrete/quantitative attributes for medical providers, such as certifications, location etc. Very few doctor finding sites had biographies or other more personal data, yet private practice and clinic websites had biographies for almost all their providers with interests, secondary specialties, and even hobbies. We
We used a paper prototype to design our user interface interaction and discover problems with our assumptions
We presented our design to the executive board of our client and received praise for our approach to comprehensive care.