Design by: Ben Dedrick and Meghna DholakiaStudent Project. General Assembly UXDI Winter 2013

Total Care

Total Care Bedside&

About the Product: WebMD Total Care is a web application and companion mobile app for patients with acute medical conditions who need a reliable, easily accessible source of information and support during their recovery. It can work with or without direct input from care providers to provide symptom and diagnosis information, medication reminders, recovery progress tracking, and a persistent record of your medical history. Through the mobile app, these features are available anywhere, and empower patients to stay on top of their own recovery by knowing exactly what to expect, as well as what potential warning signs to look for.

About the Project: Total Care is a new product system designed by two students based in San Francisco, CA. The assigned objective was to increase WebMD’s user acquisition and retention by creating a health profile tool that collects users’ health information and provides personalized suggestions.

The team was also given the constraint of choosing either a responsive web-only implementation, or a web and native mobile implementation of this project.

Total Care

Liz is a 27-year-old professional who lives in San Francisco with her dog, Buster.

Health Habits (2/5):Liz works a high-pressure job and tends to push her body. She rarely takes sick days for minor illnesses and prefers to research her conditions on the Internet for their severity rather than taking time to go into her doctor’s office. Liz doesn’t really like taking medication and tends to stop taking her prescriptions once she feels better. Last week, Liz started to develop a severe sore throat that hasn’t been getting better.

Tech Familiarity (5/5): Liz’s career is in tech and she’s very comfortable using technology. She tends to be online at all times, via her laptop at work and home, and with her mobile phone when she’s out and about.

Support System (4/5):Liz lives with a roommate and has a close group of friends, but most of her family lives on the East Coast.

health-reactive

drivenacute

tech-savvy

LIZ

“I can handle it!”

Liz has a sore throat that won’t go away.

She checks her symptoms with WebMD Total Care and suspects that she may have tonsilitis. She’s able to easily book an appointment

with her physician through her Dashboard.

Her physician diagnoses her with tonsilitis and prescribes Amoxicillin.

She also recommends WebMD Bedside to help Liz track her

recovery and answer any questions she may have after her visit.

💻Liz’s physician enters her diagnosis and prescription into her practice’s EHR system, which also populates

to Liz’s WebMD profile.

⌂At home the next day, Liz realizes

she still has some questions about her medication’s side effects, but

she’s not sure whether to try to get in touch with her doctor. Lacking

the energy to deal with the problem, Liz tries to ignore her

doubts and get some rest.

That afternoon, WebMD Bedside notifies Liz that it’s time for her daily check-in. By answering a few quick questions, Liz learns that the pain she’s been experiencing in her stomach is a

common side effect of her prescription; she gets some tips to help minimize the discomfort, and

she knows what warning signs to look for in case of a reaction to her medication.

Liz’s daily check-ins keep her feeling informed and secure throughout the recovery process, without the hassle of trying to stay in touch

with her doctor. She completes the course of her antibiotics, and before she knows it, Liz has

made a full recovery!

High-Level Flow

Prototype

Prototype

Imported Author Today, 6:32 PM Document the process you used to get to the design

Case Study

Competitive AnalysisFindingsExisting health tools generally attempt to address one of three areas: prevention, diagnosis, or condition management/recovery.

Prevention is saturated with feature-heavy tools, and is heavily fragmented between various devices and services.

Diagnosis is WebMD’s current wheelhouse. Of those who use the Internet for diagnostic information, the vast majority use WebMD, or run Google searches that lead them to WebMD.

Management holds a number of somewhat niche applications targeted toward extremely specific chronic conditions.

Opportunities IdentifiedLargest gap: Recovery. There are no major tools for helping people manage their recovery from acute illnesses.

Because of its ubiquity as a resource for diagnostic information, WebMD is in a unique position to provide value to users who are essentially already at the first step of the recovery process for acute illness.

diagnosis

Management

Prevention

Diagnosis

User ResearchMethodsTwo Web-based surveys (~40 responses total) examining usage of various health tracking systems, and four semi-structured follow-up interviews.

Key Findings– Aggregating existing health tracking services isn’t feasible. Respondents reported using a panoply of such devices and services: Fitbit (1), Nike+ (2), MyFitnessPal (1), MapMyRide (1), Lose It! (2), Garmin (1), Fitocracy (1), Offline journal/personal spreadsheet (4) – and 60% of respondents used none of the above!

– 74% of those who had visited medical resource sites like WebMD in the past indicated that advice about relieving specific symptoms was important to them.Diagnostic information and general health information/news articles were alsopopular reasons for visiting (both 58%).

– 80% of those surveyed stated that they only used resources like WebMD a few times per year. Very few users actually visit daily or multiple timesper week, and those users typically seek news articles or general health information.

– People generally trust the information they receive. Of those respondents who found medical information through sites like WebMD, 95% rated the information as “Moderately trustworthy” or better.Zero respondents reported that they considered the information they received to be “Not at all trustworthy.”

5%

80%

5%5%

5%

Once per year or less.A few times per year.Monthly.Several times per week.Daily.

How often do you consult siteslike WebMD for medical information?

User ResearchFurther Findings– Respondents were lukewarm about their knowledge of/access to their medical records. Zero respondents said that they were “Highly aware of their specific medical history and associated risk factors, and could access their medical records freely.” Most felt they had reasonable knowledge: 42% rated their confidence in this area at 4 out of 5, and 32% at 3 out of 5.

– 25% (!) of respondents do not complete their antibiotic regimens as prescribed. – 40% felt that they were not adequately supported after leaving their doctor’s office.

Opportunities Identified– Motivate return visits by finding ways to continue providing value after the initial diagnostic/symptom research phase.

– Provide easy access to persistent health records.

– Promote adherence to prescribed medication regimens through reminders and detailed treatment information.

– Act as an “always-there” guide and source of support for users who need tailored medical information after leavingtheir doctor’s office.

Additional Personas

Celeste is a 40-year-old mother and manager of an organic grocery store.

Health Habits (4/5):Celeste takes dietary supplements and works out regularly. She ran marathons in college, and has recently been trying to get back into it using an online motivation tool. Celeste is a bit of a worrier and always triple-checks her medication dosages. She’s highly sensitive to her body and prefers to supplement medical treatments with homeopathic remedies whenever possible. Celeste recently took a tumble during a run and hurt her hip.

Tech Familiarity (3/5): Celeste is fairly tech-savvy and often uses her iPad/iPhone when she’s on the go.

Support System (5/5):Celeste lives with her husband and her son and remains close to her family.

health-preventativealternative medicine

caregiverphysical injury

CELESTE

“You should try fish-oil supplements.”

CHARLES

“Don’t just tell me. Write it down!”

Health Habits (2/5):Charles was diagnosed with diabetes 10 years ago, and though he mostly keeps it under control, he needs to be reminded to exercise and check his glucose levels. Since his wife died, however, he finds that he frequently forgets. His son, Evan, lives 30 minutes away and calls to check up on his father whenever he can.

Tech Familiarity (2/5): Charles uses a computer, but tends to prefer more traditional person-to-person interactions. When he needs help with something, he usually calls a help number or asks a friend. He doesn’t own a smart phone.

Support System (2/5):Charles lives alone and most of his family and friends have moved out of the area.

chronic conditionforgetful

lacks supportnot tech-savvy

Charles is a 60-year-old widower and retiree living in Oakland

Methods Ideated and sketched out possible user scenarios for an acute illness, a chronic condition, and a physical injury.

User journeys: Charles – Chronic Condition Elizabeth – Acute Condition Celeste – Physical Injury

Walking through these scenarios lead to some pruning:

Management of chronic conditions tends to involve many detailed processes that are highly specific to particular diseases. Apps already exist to handle many of these on a per-condition basis, and trying to cover them all was outside our scope.

Physical injury could be served by a library of physical therapy exercises, but was considered to be beyond MVP.

We also saw a strong feature in adding the ability for caretakers (e.g. parents of ill children, or adults with elderly parents) to monitor the health profiles of their loved ones, but determined that this was also beyond our feasible MVP.

Scenarios

WebMD has a huge database of information and a large number of utilities tucked away in the main site, but it’s largely decentralized and awkward to navigate.

Our iterations primarily focused on refining our scope and avoiding a “Swiss army knife” approach that could’ve quickly spiraled out of control.

Iterations

We drew a lot of user flows to make sure we had a clear pictureof what processes needed to be covered for the user toaccomplish his/her objective.

We also asked several people to do card-sort exercises to give us a clearer picture of their expected visual hierarchy. This was particularly helpful in settling on a layout for the Total Care recovery dashboard.

Ben Dedrick Meghna Dholakiabdedrick@gmail.com meg.dholakia@gmail.com

Thank you!