Doctors Under
the Radar
Quick Links:
Doctors Under the Radar
Healthcare therapy app
Roles: UX Researcher & Planning Lead Apprentice
There has always been stigma attached to mental health. The advice is “cheer up” “walk it off” or “ you’ll get over it.” It’s near impossible to see mental health issues, even if you are the person experiencing it. We want everything to be “normal.”
It's easier to see physical issues. If break an arm, you’re in a cast. Everyone around you has a clear sense of the issue and can empathize. In the last couple of years global mental health has become a part of so many of our lives. This has brought it to the public eye thankfully. We are finally talking about it. A lot of the stigma has been lifted. The current site can be viewed at mdundertheradar.com
The Need
Imagine you are a healthcare worker. There is no open dialog. Many doctors and nurses suffer in silence. They hide their conditions. There is a fear of losing the trust of their patients, colleagues and employers.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle “Normally, nurses who need to take a rest are relieved by a break nurse. But at many hospitals, break nurses have been pulled into regular duty.” Over half of healthcare workers interviewed in 2021 are impacted by mental health issues.
This UX and visual design project was pro bono. I was able to see the problem and suggest a solution to help get this service out to healthcare workers.
Heuristic Analysis
When visiting the site, there is a pop-up box. It is a mood check that asks "How are you feeling today?" Some of the links are not connected. Most pop-ups are closed and can be missed when the site loads. Access to the forum is set up using a Google Form. With the need for a more confidential approach, there may be an avenue that asks for a lower cognitive load for stressed healthcare workers.
My team and I took a look at the service and site for our class project. We did a deep dive into this service and re-imagined what it could be.
Pop-up
Physician's form
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Text can be larger for readability.
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Checks for site visitor's mood.
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All three buttons are not connected.
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Not clear where the input info will go.
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Connected to a Google Doc.
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Many prior onboarding steps.
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Displays email address when selected.
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Seems public.
Interview screener results
My team and I created our survey and sent it to the contacts we had, including our social networks.
At first, we made “Name” a required field in the form, but noticed that we didn’t get a lot of engagement from participants. Some people put “anonymous” rather than provide a name. This made sense, since talking about mental health issues is a sensitive topic. We adjusted the form and made “Name” an optional field, and noticed an immediate improvement as more surveys were returned to us.
This made a huge impact and we saw our interview confirmations jump to 80% across North America. We knew right away, it is critical to assure the healthcare worker that the service is confidential and safe.
From our interviews, we found that workers wanted to know that their information is confidential and safe, were on the go and had a hard time finding therapists and needed help
with self-care.
Onboarding wireframes
Pivot
From our interview results, we found there are 4 different things that healthcare workers mentioned as essential features that they’d like to see in an app like this.
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Therapy
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Self Care
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Sharing
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Forum
New onboarding
We decided the new members would choose their path during onboarding. Also we wanted to create a welcoming mood.
Working on paper to communicate with the team was hugely helpful. This way, I was able to present and then pivot easily. Otherwise there would be a lot of time and effort lost in a full re-design.
A link to the clickable prototype can be found here.
Updated app onboarding
This shows our new therapy onboarding flow.
All of our research told us clearly that this needed to be an app. Here is my Figma redesign of the onboarding flow and requesting a therapist.
The 4 option design for the profile page and buttons was a team effort.
My goal is to give the experience an ease of use and a travel poster feel. The artwork from for the home screen is from paper cut master Masayasu Uchida. Her imagery speaks to calm, travel and adventure.
