Project Duration
12 Months
Services Provided
Research, UX/UI Design, Prototyping, User Testing
Introduction
eConsult is a digital triage and online consultation platform that allows NHS GP practices to better understand the needs of their patients. By collecting rich, safe and structured patient information, patients can be better supported to get the right care at the right time and in the right place.
As a Senior Product Designer at eConsult, my mission was to revolutionise how healthcare professionals communicate with patients. Faced with the challenge of transforming a traditional PDF-based consultation system into an interactive, efficient digital solution, I was part of the whole process from research, design and development of the Smart Inbox.
All the provided data in this eConsult is fictitious and is intended solely for design and testing purposes.
The Challenge
Create a product that can help make patient consultations faster and more efficient, while also improving clinical decision-making.
Healthcare providers were facing challenges in efficiently managing patient consultations. It was evident that there was a need for a more dynamic, customisable, and user-friendly platform. To tackle this challenge, we took the initial step of immersing ourselves in the world of healthcare providers. We conducted interviews and shadowed healthcare providers to gain invaluable insights into their daily struggles with communication overload. Our empathetic approach grounded our design process, ensuring that the solutions we crafted were not just theoretical but deeply rooted in the real needs of our users.
Initial Brainstorming and Ideation
We started by engaging with our users and comprehending their requirements and difficulties through research. This led us to the stage of ideation. During this phase, we came up with numerous ideas by examining our users' issues from the perspectives of both patients and clinicians. We brainstormed solutions by noting down and sketching any idea that could resolve our users' problems.
Discovering and Prioritising Design Opportunities
Our team embarked on a discovery phase to identify and prioritise enhancements for the eConsult application's two-way messaging feature. This was carried out through a two branches approach: a need-confidence matrix to guide our research focus and a mind map to explore feature-specific ideas.
Feature Mapping
This matrix helped us to strategically identify areas that required immediate design attention versus those that could be explored later. The vertical axis represents the 'Need' for design input, ranging from low to high, while the horizontal axis represents our 'Confidence' in our current understanding of the user's needs and the best design solutions, again ranging from low to high.
After completing our initial exercise, we realised that a two-way messaging system was necessary. There are occasions when the GP needs more information from the patient after they submit their eConsult. This was when we discovered that the “Allow the patient to reply once” feature was essential.
Unfortunately, there was no easy way to communicate with the patient other than sending an email or calling them, which was time-consuming. To address this issue, we aim to introduce a new feature called "Two-Way Messaging" that would automate the process and make it more efficient.
The mind map provided a structured way to brainstorm and categorise potential features and improvements for the two-way messaging system.
Inbox Features: Identified the need for a global inbox for all patient responses, patient triage capabilities, and notifications for new responses that are aligned to the clinician on duty.
Message Interaction: Explored options like linking messages to previous correspondences for context, managing photo attachments, and ensuring information isn't lost when minimising the view.
Toolbar: Discussed the importance of saving photos and responses to patient records and how the toolbar could be configured to assist clinicians more effectively.
Patient Response: Delved into the patient's end of the messaging, considering details like clear identification of the clinician's requests and the option to mark messages as 'actioned'.