Mobile Design
A City-Wide Bed Board
Overview
A qualitative study conducted by 17 graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania revealed the many barriers patients face when accessing detox and inpatient care. This project aims to provide a solution, through a mobile and web app, that will allow Crisis Response Centers, navigators, and people seeking treatment for substance use disorder to find available detox and inpatient beds more quickly and efficiently.
Timeline — 2017-Present
Organization — Creative Resilience Collective
My Role — UX Designer
Tool Kit — Figma, Adobe CC
Problem
Navigators of the healthcare system face barriers that prohibit them from accurately and efficiently finding available treatment beds for substance use disorder patients.
Solution
Design a “city-wide bed board”: an open-to-the-public mobile and web based platform providing updated data from treatment centers about their detox and inpatient beds.
*For now, the platform will only contain information from treatment centers within the Greater Philadelphia Area and is only designed for mobile use.
How might we help Crisis Response Centers, navigators, Medicaid-insured patients and those with substance use disorder easily find available detox and inpatient beds according to their specific needs?
User Research
User Focus Groups
Displaying the data collected during a focus group session
Our initial the data from the graduate study was not specific enough to define the direction, idea, and goal of the tool to be designed.
I wanted to collect more directed research that would allow us to understand our users and define the direction of the tool.
A user focus group discussing their answers to a question prompt
To gather user research, I and several CRC members facilitated discussions in the form of user focus groups asking 4 main questions:
How did you choose where to refer people to?
Identify primary barriers in each case?
What technology did you use to make these referrals?
What made the referral possible?
Key Findings
Synthesizing the data collected during the focus group sessions provided us with tentative insights on the direction of the tool:
the tool has to include a mobile platform version
the tool should be designed for providers to use
the tool should reduce wait times (i.e. patient wait times, facility response times)
Why “Bed Availability” ?
Upon presenting our synthesized research to our users, we gathered several more insights that defined our problem:
Providers had difficulty finding accurate information on available detox/inpatient beds
The current process used by providers to learn of available beds (email, calling) caused long wait times for patients
For a smooth and efficient bed referral process, providers expect no lag time in communication between treatment centers and with patients accuracy of reported available bed
With the primary problem identified from our users, we developed our main problem statement:
How might we help Crisis Response Centers, navigators, Medicaid-insured patients and those with substance use disorder easily find available detox and inpatient beds according to their specific needs?
UX Design
Prior to any sort of design, we identified 4 main concerns that our bed availability tool should address based on the needs of our users:
Accuracy: Providers must be able to know when bed availability was last updated via real-time updates
Efficiency: Providers must be able to search for availability based on bed types (detox; inpatient) and for different genders quickly
Specificity: Providers must be able to filter available bed according to specific patient needs
Safety: The tool must not violate HIPAA protocol and must ensure patient information privacy
Content Mapping
The design strategist and I created a content map to flush out the content and information hierarchy of the platform, ensuring that we focused on the design goal.
While we created this content map, it was still vital for us later on to confirm the salience of this content with our users. With content in mind, I was ready to move onto wireframes.
Wireframes
Web wireframes
My wireframes were guided by the content maps I had done earlier. I began with website wireframes because I thought it would be easier to design starting from web to mobile - something I reconsider later on.
Mobile wireframes
As proven by our previous user research, it was essential to have a mobile version for the bed availability tool.
Iterations
Various web iterations of different screens
The design strategist and I held small, informal meetings with a few users after each of my low fidelity iterations to gather user feedback.
Making direct notes of the user feedback given during our small, informal meetings with users
Receiving frequent user feedback, even if it was on a small scale, allows me incorporate the feedback and iteratively revise my designs before I present a high-fidelity prototype to a larger set of users for testing.
Though I began with web wireframes, I ultimately focused primarily on mobile designs because:
Our user research indicated mobile phones were the most commonly used technology by our navigators
I learned about mobile first design and the salience of progressive advancement design to our project, allowing me to focus first on the core, fundamental features of the platform
Several mobile iterations
Current Designs
The current designs are only for mobile use because I prioritized the technology platform our users use the most.
Red brackets indicate when # of beds available was last updated
Accuracy
One of the main user frustrations was not knowing an accurate count of available beds at a given time to relay to patients.
A clear, visible time stamp allows users know when any type of bed was available and make judgement decisions based on that information.
Efficiency
I confirmed the 3 primary filters a navigator uses to search for an available bed. Displaying these criteria first allows for quick searches and revisions.
3 primary filters: (1) Insurance plan (2) Gender (3) Type of bed (inpatient or detox)
(1) Handicap Accessible (2) Pregnancy Accommodation (3)Language (4) Treatment Specialties (5) Additional Facilities
Specificity
Additional filters are available to accommodate patients with specific needs at treatment facilities.
Safety
The search engine complies with patient privacy regulations by not requiring patient’s personal identification information. Additionally, the app will not save any past searches; each new search will begin with a blank fields to input.
The search engine will not save any past searches and will reset after each search
Reflections
Key takeaways so far:
The design process is not linear. When I learned about UX, I was taught UX research comes before UX design and the prototype comes last. In reality, UX research is always happening, and your designs can constantly fluctuate according to new information that you receive.
Buy-in greatly influences the success of your final design and product. Our platform needs treatment centers to willingly participate in our pilot design. Presenting benefits such as time and cost reduction as well as better patient care quality convinced treatment centers to do so.
Going off of #3, presenting is a part of UX design. The healthcare system is bureaucratic. Fact. It was insanely hard to conduct user research because a patient goes through so many unseen layers of approvals to get treatment and many administrations refused to speak with us. Facilitating contact and maintaining the relationship required us to be professional, personable, and trustworthy.
ALL assumptions must be validated and tested. There is an incredible amount of assumption in the beginning, even from those who are tangentially in the field; however, if they are not your users, testing all of your assumptions will save you a lot in the long run.