In this case study, I am going to innovate with the design process and unravel my decisions and thinking for a better understanding of my motivations.

The story that led to Innovation

A doctor in a medical hospital was taking a break and sipping coffee. An emergency case arrived, it was a woman having a very high fever and agitation.

Without the proper knowledge of the patient’s medical history, the doctor administered painkillers and sedatives. And due to the lack of disclosure of information that the patient was taking anti-depressant drugs, there was a contradictory reaction to the patient’s health and she died due to cardiac arrest.

Can you imagine the number of deaths due to improper diagnosis or lack of medical history?

Medical diagnosis errors are the third leading cause of death. Misdiagnosis is estimated to occur in 30% of patients, leading to unnecessary hospitalizations in 85% and unnecessary antibiotic use in 92%. Collectively, these errors lead to between 50,000 and 130,000 cases of unnecessary hospitalizations and between $195 and $515 million in avoidable health care spending annually.

That’s a huge number right?

What do you think if we could save lives by designing a wonderful centralized system that could be of great help to both users and doctors?

I am going to write a detailed case study. It will take you through all the stages from ideation to high fidelity prototypes. It will take you a few minutes to read but I am sure it is going to be a great one.

Keep reading!

Let Us know about Quick Diagnose.

Quick Diagnose is a medical app that will provide a dynamic solution for the management of a patient’s history and medical records, patient’s live status and provides information about nearby hospitals and doctors according to their ratings.

The app may also provide the feasibility to connect with family members for situations of emergency and distress with relevant information like common blood groups.

The doctors from their system could view and analyze patient’s information and could also update patient’s live status. Doctors can set reminders and book appointments with patients online which would be feasible for both doctors and patients.

Goals

• To provide a centralized system for the management of medical records that are accessible from anywhere. So, that the users and doctors could have better management and understanding of patient’s health and diagnosis.
• To favor OTP verification through Aadhar. So, that we could maintain a dependable system with security.
• To search doctors and hospitals according to the needs of the user and the user could easily refine his/her search according to ratings, reviews, and categories.
• To set forth a new and unique feature of updating a patient’s health through a live status update. So, that patient’s family could manage things accordingly.
• To allow patients to set reminders for their regular checkups, new appointments, or for medicine dosage.
• To provide a linking system for family members, where their profiles are listed with their medical records.
• To add on an emergency feature for alarming medical situations. Through which the location of the user gets notified to the nearest hospital and to the patient’s listed family members.

Research

1. User Journey

Through this user journey map, we would get an idea about how the user is going to interact with the product which could serve a great purpose for empathy mapping from the user’s point of view.

The user journey of Quick Diagnose from discoverability to the final diagnosis of the patient in the area of focus for us to create empathy for the user.

• The user may encounter some medical problems.
• He may wish to see a doctor and may have a medical history, which he needs to manage for his treatment.
• He now scrutinizes for a way to find a good doctor and discovers Quick Diagnose.
• The app and its UI look new to the user but as he unfolds the journey of the app through different clicks, he finds it usable.
• With the help of Quick Diagnose, the user gets treated well and the purpose of the app gets fulfilled.

2. User Survey with Typeform

It is always best to know about your users. I created a survey on Typeform, it is an interactive survey tool that I found really useful for my research. I thought it would be better if I could know my user’s views on the problems they face. So, I conducted this survey and the results were really helpful.

Findings

• Users want a legit solution to deal with emergency situations.
• Users want a proper health record management system for themselves and their family members. So, they don’t need to struggle with the papers.
• Users want a live check on their family members to get updated with their current health status.
• Users need suggestions from various specialist doctors in different fields with contact information for booking appointments.
• Users want the app to be like DigiLocker where they can access their medical records from anywhere.

Pain Points

• Patients find it difficult to find a good doctor or hospital.
• Often times it happens that patients simply can’t manage their health reports or they have to travel to another place. In such situations, they need a management system.
• Patients die because in the situation of emergency they were not taken to the hospital at the right time.
• The patient's family faces constant stress as they don’t get proper updates on the patient’s health.
• Patients who are working professionals and remain busy with their work often find it hard to manage with medical appointments and booking a doctor.

USP’s

• Health Records Management
• Live Status Update
• Emergency Solution
• Reminders
• Filtering process to find doctors and hospitals.

3. User’s Persona

User personas represent future users or customers in a paradigmatic structure. On the basis of my research, I tried to put down my findings on user behavior in a structured persona. It would help us to get an idea of our users and their rationality to build empathy with our product.

4. Competitive Analysis

Competitive analysis helps us to get a deep insight into our competitors and prospective users. I have done the analysis of some already available medical applications which are mostly used by the users and have good ratings and reviews.

Analysis of Competition:

• Though some apps have management of medical records, they don’t have a centralized management system where we can access files with authentication from an administered system.
• Some apps have OTP verification, but they don’t have legal verification through Aadhar. Since medical records are a matter of concern and contain really important data, there should be a solid verification system.
• In any of the present apps, there is no feature of live status tracking for a patient’s family. This should be added as demanded by users during the research.
• There is no proper solution for emergency situations in any of the applications.
• According to an interview with a medical student, I found that family linking is of the utmost priority for emergency situations and the family’s health details should be mentioned in the app.

Ideation

1. Storyboarding

Presenting our ideas in the form of a story on paper could lead us to great refining of the product. It shows us an actual scenario where our product could actually come to play.

Quick Diagnose is a medical app and analyzing different situations for the features and working of the app for the realistic situation is very important. Since the app could potentially save lives, I have tried to depict some scenario which leads me to important conclusions about some features and working of the app. It gave me a thorough understanding of the user’s situation and the importance of my project.

There could be another medical situation where Quick Diagnose would prove to be a useful solution:

Severe Accident

In case of an accident, after the patient is admitted. He’s having severe blood loss. Since the Quick Diagnose app already has the patient’s family members’ medical history details, the family gets notified for blood. The patient’s family arrives on time, blood donation is successful and the patient’s life is saved.

Skin Allergy

A person is having a skin allergy. She is new in the town and doesn’t know about dermatologists in that area. She comes to know about Quick Diagnose and searches about nearest hospitals and doctors, found a good-rated doctor, books appointments, and treatment goes well. She successfully repairs her skin damage.

Pregnancy

A working woman is pregnant. She has to go for regular checkups. As she is doing a job, she has important works scheduled and there is also a high chance that she may forget her appointments. Quick Diagnose has a reminder system that makes it easier for her to remember appointments. It also provides a good management system for all her check-up and sonography reports.

2. Target Audience

To know our users well, we will dive a little bit more into the type of audience we are targeting for our application. Analyzing the target audience will provide us a chance to build more empathy with our future users.

Roles

• Patients with chronic diseases.
• Patients looking for doctors for prescriptions or checkups.
• People worried about their family member's health.
• Anyone who needs a medical facility.

Demographics

• 15 to 80 yrs old
• Predominantly patients with chronic diseases and regular checkups.
• Financially stable/ decent income.
• Working-class or busy people.
• People with family.

Psychographics

Personality

• Studious
• Thoughtful
• Smart

Lifestyle

• Stressed due to disease.
• Unable to manage health due to work.

3. Card Sorting

The above research conducted has led to an app design in my mind. I was so confused about what features to add and where to add them. I wrote all the stuff down that was going on in my mind and tried to organize them with my sticky notes.

To be Continued…

In this article, I intensively described the conducted research for the product I am going to design. To save your time and to give you a detailed overview, I have decided to divide my case study into parts. If you liked this article, stay tuned for the next one, and do not forget to clap and follow.

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Feel free to contact me for suggestions and feedback. You can mail me at [email protected].