Health Buddy
Bringing convenience and efficiency to the digital healthcare service
Overview
Health Buddy is a public healthcare mobile app developed by the SingHealth Group. The project aims to redesign the mobile app to make it simple and easy to use.
This is a group project with 5 team members, in which I took the role of Project Manager and UX Designer.
Project Timeline
Throughout the project, we incorporated the double diamond process. Below is the summary of the design iteration stages and the project milestones.
About Health Buddy
Health Buddy is a mobile app that was developed by the SingHealth Group in 2012 with the aim to give users convenience to make and reschedule appointments and access their healthcare information.
Existing Health Buddy app screenshots as of Aug 2022
The problem is..
Health Buddy has poor rating and feedbacks from users. With an outdated and cluttered user interface, it causes inefficiency in completing user task and usability issues. There were many features added in the app that users are not even aware what is it about and do not understand the functionality.
Our goal is to give the app an overhaul for the user interface and optimize the user flow to increase its usability.
PROCESS SUMMARY
Long story short..
We started off with heuristic analysis, user research, and initial usability testing to figure out what's the current situation. With the insights from our user research, we formed 3 user personas and examined their pain points in completing the user flow.
To meet the project timeline, we selected only certain features to be included in the user testings, which are: appointment, register queue, profile switching, medicine, and payment. We tested and iterated our design, first with the mid-fidelity, followed by the high-fidelity prototype.
THE SOLUTION
Final Design
Within just 3 weeks, we reconstructed the app’s sitemap, revamp the user flow, and create a new visual design that still represents Health Buddy's brand image.
THE OUTCOME
Usability Score
With the redesigned prototype, we improve the usability score rating by 37%.
37%
57
Current App
78
Redesigned App
What users like about the app
General
App is cleaner and less cluttered
App was intuitive to use and visually clean and pleasing
eQueue
Useful information in the pop-up confirmation.
Medicine
Captures all the important information about individual medications
Appointment
Useful information provided (e.g. fasting instructions for tests)
Recent places is useful
Payment
Able to view bill breakdown in-app without downloading the bill.
Click to view full process
DISCOVER
Understanding Current Situation
The first step that we took was to perform heuristic analysis to see the problem with the current app. And here’s what we found from the current app.
Competitive & Comparative Study
Next, we did comparative and competitive analysis with other apps in the market. For the competitors, we selected Health Hub and One NUHS mobile app since they also provided similar services. We learned what are the positives that we could implement and the negatives that we should avoid.
We also take a look at what others have been doing for registration and queue tracking from Samsung service centre and Genki Sushi restaurant.
User Research
We conducted user interview and usability test on the existing app to understand more about the existing problem.
Participants
10 users
-
Both married & single
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Age 28-40
Method
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Usability test on existing Health Buddy mobile app
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User interview (both remote and in person)
Criteria
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Uses public healthcare system, whether as subsidised or private patient and using some sort of healthcare service app
Objectives
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To understand users’ journey when using public healthcare services
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Find out users’ pain points while using HealthBuddy app
DEFINE
Affinity Mapping
We gathered all the insights from our user interview and conducted affinity mapping together in order to identify the users' pain points. Here are 4 key insights from the data that we’ve synthesized:
1
I want to use my time efficiently
2
I want my experience to be seamless without extra steps
3
I need detailed but easy-to-understand information
4
I want a clean app interface so I can easily find the features I need
User Persona
We recognised 3 key user types who use the app.
Meet our main persona,
Busy Beatrice
She is 35, married with no kids. She uses the apps mainly for herself. She always go to the clinic nearest to her house. As a busy person, she make sure to book her appointments in advance and to save it in her own calendar to avoid queueing. Prior to her visit, she will register and get her queue number from the app and utilize the app to pay and deliver the medicine to her house.
GOALS
FRUSTRATIONS
-
Minimize time on waiting and queueing
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Simple and straightforward services and functions
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Have all the information she needs at her fingertips to plan her time properly
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Have to wait at the polyclinic so she doesn’t miss her queue number
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Too many clicks and steps in the app
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Unsure about the steps during her appointments
HOW MIGHT WE
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make it faster and more efficient for Beatrice to book and manage her medical appointments?
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help Beatrice avoid queueing and waiting?
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help Beatrice plan her schedule efficiently when she needs to go to a doctor’s appointment?
SOLUTION
Redesign the Appointment and eQueue functions in Health Buddy so that Beatrice can
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book her appointment without any unnecessary steps
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track her queue and appointment progress easily
View other persona:
DESIGN & ITERATE
Ideation and Design Process
As this is the first time we worked in a group, it was a struggle to come out with the design and create the prototype together. It took longer to decide and design because now we have to get agreement as a team on the direction to go.
Nevertheless, we managed to produce both mid-fi and high-fi prototypes and conducted 2 rounds of usability tests. Here are some design changes that we did in comparison to the original app.
Homepage Main Services | Reduce Clutter
eQueue & Tracking | View appointment & track progress easily
Home Page | Switch profile seamlessly
Medicine | View medicine information easily
High-Fi Usability Study
Participants
8users
(same participants from initial user interview)
Scenario & Tasks
For All
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View unpaid bills
For Busy Beatrice
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Identify the tasks that can be completed in the Appointments page
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Book appointment for a specialist service
For Caregiver Cathryn
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Change profile
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Check and pay medical bills for dependent
For Regular Rayner
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Find out information about a medicine
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Order medicine refill
Findings
What needs to be improved (implemented in the Final Proto)
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[eQueue] Make the entire "Current Appointment" status box clickable to make it easier for user to open the tracking progress.
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[eQueue] Use a "X" button to close the progress bar instead of swipe up motion to avoid accidental close when scrolling down.
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[Appointment] On the make new appointment flow , change "by location" tab to "by facility" because users expected to use location service to find the nearest institution.
What needs to be improved (for future)
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[General] Font sizes might be small for elderly. Provide an option for bigger font size.
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[Medicine] Include more photos (e.g: box packaging) in the medication detail page to avoid confusion for medication that looks similar.
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[Appointment] Enable location service once it's technically viable.
DELIVER
Final Prototype
We implemented some of the key feedback from usability test findings to produce the final prototype. Feel free to play with the clickable prototype or view the video below.
Busy Beatrice
Make a new appointment
Register & Track Queue
Caregiver Cathryn
Switch profile and view information
Regular Rayner
View and order medicine
DELIVER
Mobile & Desktop Website
We also did the mobile web and desktop screens as part of the project deliverable. As SingHealth already has their own respective website, we want to have an informative site to educate users on why they should be using Health Buddy. This website provides information regarding Health Buddy’s functions as well as direct users on where they can download the application.
Reflections
Challenges
It was really challenging since all of us are doing this course part time. As project manager, at first I approached it as what I did before in my full time job. Divide the work, get everyone's agreement and make them accountable for it. But it wasn’t as straightforward in this part time course as everyone has different bandwidth and capacity. So adjustment had to be done along the way and be more flexible, understanding and compassionate toward each other.
It was the first time we were doing the prototype together in the same Figma file. As everyone has different ways of doing things, it’s extremely important to communicate properly with each other. Over communicating in this case is better than none.
What I learned
The good part being in a group is that I can learn from each other. Because of the diverse job experience, my teammates have different areas of strengths that I could learn from, such as how to structure the user research questions and conduct interviews, how to create a template for the design system and set up the UI screens, how to make use of Figma components to prototype better and how to present better.