The incursion of Covid-19 has made telemedicine a more desirable mode of medic and patient communication. We have seen more products created to make health care contactless and accessible to unreachable regions. Necessity is, after all, the mother of adoption.

For the uninitiated, telemedicine makes possible the reception of healthcare services via any digital means. It removes the need for a physical meeting between a patient and a healthcare provider.

The vast audience of telemedicine products indulges in seeking a remote diagnosis for health challenges they might be going through or better understanding their symptoms. Compared to traditional healthcare, telemedicine brings medical care to people despite location and time constraints — at home, in outer space, or otherwise.

UX writing (microcopy) can be crucial in shaping the telemedicine experience.

How?

As we know, UX writing goes beyond just writing words. It exists to be the conversation between the experience and the person using it. When designing the copy of a telemedicine experience, we need to be conscious of how we want to converse with someone experiencing illness, depression, or even suffering from anxiety. We have to consider how our words will influence and guide the actions of a user seeking solutions to their health challenges on our product.

Barring the business goals, we want UX writing to aid the user in achieving the goals they seek to fulfil on a telemedicine platform. Let us examine ways that microcopy can transform the telemedicine experience.

Establish trust

Sometimes users will abandon your app because they don’t trust you. Using a telemedicine platform for the first time will come with a lot of scepticism.

Firstly, a user might be wary of meeting a quack or unqualified medical personnel on your platform — just because they get access to doctors on an app doesn’t justify how credible their services will be. We can use words to communicate the credibility and competence level of the professionals on the platform.

Secondly, patients will pay for whatever service received on the product. If there’s no assurance that they will meet their health expectations on your product, they will jump ship with the same speed they used in downloading that app. Along every step of the user journey, we can use UX writing to make users aware of how we plan to meet their expectations, and if we can’t, we must let them know too. A telemedicine product that champions transparency will succeed. Failing to meet the user’s expectations creates negative feelings toward us that hinder our business goals.

Thirdly, when onboarding users on a telemedicine platform, there’s the process of asking for essential user information which could be needed to know our users better and match them with personnel. The patient may perceive some of these questions as unnecessary/awkward and will not be comfortable enough to share such information.

Questions concerning gender, earnings, race, educational competence, religion, and sexual preference, can create situations where the user is unnecessarily self-aware and insecure. Such a case can lead to panic and abandonment of the onboarding process. We should consider making particular questions optional. Or better still, explain why you need the information. (A word of advice, always proceed with information you can’t do without and if you can’t explain why you need that information, it’s best to leave it out of the user journey.)

It’s natural for any normal human being to put their guard up in these scenarios because healthcare is a sensitive subject. It’s a natural human trait to seek refuge and flee when our brain interprets a situation as ‘‘imminent danger’’.

And that’s where UX writing comes in. When our user’s minds go amiss with weighing the cons and pros of taking a risk on your platform, use microcopy to alleviate those concerns and ease their mind.

When we do this, the user becomes more informed of their journey within your product, the expectations the product can meet, and they get a clearer picture of the goals they can accomplish. When done, the foundation for mutual respect between product and customer exists, and the interaction becomes bliss.

‘’When there is uncertainty, the user will abort”

Examples

Betterhelp knows certain users will feel self-conscious and possibly uneasy about sharing their religious identity, so they explain with microcopy why that information is needed:

Cerebral lets its users know that government-controlled substances are not part of their offered medication:

Look at how microcopy is used just below the button(CTA)

Imagine a scenario where a user who has been prescribed a government-controlled medication onboards and pays for Cerebral without being aware of this information. The user would feel disappointed.

Converse with kind words

When we write copy for telemedicine products, we need to understand how such a user will interact with the technology from their perspective. Put yourself in the shoes of a user struggling with stress, mood swings, headaches, insomnia, blurry vision, and even anxiety. Fathom how these conditions can affect interaction with the product.

Ask yourself, ‘’How can I make the experience better for such a user?’’, Because such users are more likely to get exhausted with onboarding, be error-prone and generally perceive content differently.

With users coming from situations of anxiety, it’s only natural if those emotions affect how they interact with digital products. We want such users to engage in an experience that treats them with kindness. An experience that will not fuel their anxiety by blaming them for making errors. A user flow that won’t leave them at a loss and ignorant of how to navigate the product. Error messages trigger cortisol, a biomarker of psychological stress. That buildup of cortisol can turn to anxiety and cause a user to abandon your app. If a user makes mistakes, tell them kindly how to fix them, or better still, see what you could do to prevent any errors from occurring.

We want to be also particular in employing kindness in the user flow of setting up an appointment with a doctor. How does the error message read when issues are setting up the video? Can the user easily navigate the process, ‘’Are these helper texts non-judgemental and non-criticising?’’. Consider how medical terminologies might make users feel ignorant because they aren’t aware of the meaning, so it’s best to simplify them or leave out words we know the users will not understand.

Further within the user journey, microcopy can help users understand what they need to do for their session to be successful (e.g., ‘‘put on headphones’’). Or communicate how long their session will last before they need to take a break (e.g., “The session will last one hour; please feel free to take breaks in between if you’re feeling exhaustion). Or even pace them, collect feedback and keep them engaged throughout the session. Microcopy can also help users feel less anxious before and during sessions by providing reassurance that they are doing everything they can to achieve their health goals.

Microcopy will create an interface that helps users have a more relaxed experience with telehealth, assuage tensions or remove stress and fear. When done right, the user feels more involved and connected to your product because you’ve shown you are honest and kind and you genuinely care about helping them heal.

I get notifications like these every day from Nguvu Health. I now genuinely look out for it at the start of my day😅

Motivate your patients

It’s natural for patients with health problems to feel a loss of being actionable and unmotivated. A lack of motivation can hinder users from completing goals on a telemedicine product. We should also consider how microcopy can help users feel motivated not just with using our product but with how they perform activities outside the app and their overall health.

Depression and illness can take away the joy of looking forward to the normal activities and routines we enjoy. When writing copy, we should consider how our words can make users on the platform feel more confident in helping themselves heal. Consider how your words can make users feel good and positive. Users with decreased motivation to use the app will abandon it at any level of the user journey.

A way to keep users motivated about their healing is by making them aware of their goals and the incentives they stand to gain from using the product.

To read more about how microcopy can motivate, see chapter 3 of Kinneret Yifrah’s, Microcopy: The Complete Guide.

Involve the medics too

We will create stellar UX Writing when we collaboratively produce it. Getting as much information from all relevant stakeholders is vital. Involving the medics in the process of creating microcopy will not only simplify our work but give us untapped gold too.

Early on, we can get their perspectives on researching our potential patients. We can brainstorm the customer journey of the product with them.

Later on, they can review how you’ve worded medical terminologies. We can get insights into how they perceive the tone and language of the interaction. They could even spot potential barriers that might hinder user progression. Primarily, we must get a lot of insights on how to shape the content from the health worker’s perspective. Collaborations like this will make everybody’s work easier and the process of creating a pleasant telemedicine experience more rewarding.

Ultimately, microcopy is king.

When writing copy for a telemedicine product, The recipe for success lies in considering how our words influence user activity beyond the platform. Our job isn’t limited to just editing or writing short. We must employ as much empathy as we have in our ammunition to understand the user. In this context, we must consider external situational factors unique to the user and how they can influence progression within the telemedicine experience.

When we give precedence to how words shape experiences when building telemedicine products, it’s a win for everybody. The patients get a more inclusive disbursement of quality healthcare. The business will hit its financial goals because users don’t abandon and leave negative reviews about the experience. Overall, society becomes more enthused with humans who are not just champions of the product experience but champions of a healthy life.