ER Check-in App
Tools: Sketch
A UX Design Challenge project to create an effective ER Check-in app.
THE PROBLEM
Hospital staff want an easier and more efficient way to serve Emergency Room patients through quicker check-in and prioritization of care for more serious and life-threatening injuries. Patients have repeatedly expressed their frustration with the hospital check-in process.
Hospitals have asked for feedback from their patients and employees regarding their experience with the process of visiting the ER, and many patients and staff voiced their concerns.
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Patients are frustrated when they get inaccurate wait times for the ER and when patients with less severe cases go in front of them. They are also frustrated with the entire check-in process and feel that it is time consuming. They expressed that it takes too long for them to receive their paperwork to fill out, and then for the patient access representative to verify and input their information to complete their check-in, especially since the information is repetitive.
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Nurses are frustrated when they can't effectively prioritize more severe cases because of the overflow of more minor cases. They feel that the quality of care that patients experience decreases when patients with severe cases are forced to experience long wait times due to staff focusing on the abundant minor cases in the ER.
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The hospital has decided that it wanted to produce an app that makes the ER check-in process effective for both patients and hospital staff, so they hired me to design the app.
THE OBJECTIVE
Create an app for an easier way for patients to check into the ER, know how long their wait will be, while also helping hospital staff prioritize which patients need to be seen first.
THE SOLUTION
MY ROLE
For this project, I served as the Lead UX Researcher and the Lead UX Designer.
I didn't do formal research for this project. I previously worked as a Patient Access Representative for a hospital and during my time there, I had many conversations with both patients and coworkers. Most of the time, patients and coworkers were complaining to me about the check-in process, and some coworkers felt that the current process, which was done completely in person, hindered their ability to quickly and efficiently care for patients. I gathered information from these conversations and used my previous experience as an employee to identify pain points for patients and hospital employees.
BREAKING DOWN THE PROCESS
The process I used to design this app was: creating low fidelity wireframing, creating a mood board, and creating final, high fidelity wireframes. For this project, I used the Sketch app to design my app.
Once I had an idea of my goals for this app, I started the design process. I started by creating low-fidelity wireframes to create the general layout for the app. Once, I finished mapping out the layout of the app, I created a mood board for inspiration for the visual design of the app. After my mood board was complete, I started adding my UI Design elements to my design to create my final, high-fidelity wireframes.
Lo-fi Wireframes
Mood Board
Hi-fi Wireframes
TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK
LESSONS LEARNED
With this being my very first UX Design project, I was definitely able to reflect on this project and learn some lessons from it.
Looking back, I feel that my design process could be a lot clearer if I had created some user personas based off of the patients I had conversations with while I registered them. I feel that this step would have added more clarity for me while designing and for others that may view my design, by providing a visual element to justify how I drew certain conclusions to design the app pages the way that I did.]
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I also feel that formal research methods like user interviews and surveys could have also helped with ensuring that I address all of the major pain points for the users and beneficiaries of this app.
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Lastly, I would have taken additional steps to create an interactive prototype and perform usability testing. I feel that this step would have provided tremendous insight as to how users would interact with the app and if the app truly would have improved users' experiences with the ER check-in process.