Identifying multi-lingual issues in a Canadian government service and proposing a redesign to improve that service.
Discovering multi-lingual issues in government services required research into how government services work. At this stage, stripped down ecosystem maps were created on government service areas for acquiring a better understanding of what the Canadian government offers to people.
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After research into each topic area, the healthcare system in Canada stood out as a service area that is struggling in many ways. Improvements in the Canadian healthcare system can effect the lives of many struggling Canadians in an impactful way, hence why healthcare was chosen as the area of focus for this project.
1. A general google search about healthcare issues in Canada for a broad and unspecific view of the overal scop of problems in Canadian Healthcare
2. Canadian government website to learn about offered services and assistance about healthcare
3. BC government website to learn about offered services and assistance about healthcare
4. Reddit and other similar community driven forums about healthcare issues experiences in Canada
5. Informational interviews at EmilyCarr with professionals who have experience designing for Canadian healthcare.
Primary research revealed that “access to doctors” is a frequent and prominent issue that negatively impacts many Canadians. Finding doctors is problematic in Canada due to a combination of factors. Some of these factors are doctor shortages, lack of proper information, the Canadian healthcare system structure, and more.
These issues are only amplified for multi-lingual minorities because finding a doctor is a required step for all Canadians towards living a healthy and disease free life. The frequency, prominence, and importance of this problem area makes it the preferred area to tackle for this project.
In short, research shows there is a shortage of family doctors coupled with increased demands.
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According to Canada’s healthcare system, people are required to have a family doctor. After the hardship brought by the pandemic, there has been a growing demand for patients that need a family doctor.
The problem is family doctors are looking to cut back on practices and moving towards retirement while there are not enough newly trained doctors to replace retiring doctors. This is the reason why finding a doctor is not enough. People need to find available walk-in clinics that accept new patients.
A patient's health and well being is increased when they go to a doctor who speaks the same primary language.
A study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal has concluded that patients who speak languages other than English are up to 54% less likely to die or experience severe health outcomes when paired with physicians who speak the same language as them.
This study shows the importance of helping multilingual minorities match up with doctors who speak the same language as them.
How can multilingual minorities currently find doctors in Canada?
1. Asking someone you know for recommendations
2. Contacting a settlement service provider
3. Contact community health centre
Bring an interpreter to walk in clinic (unclear how to find the walk in clinic)
Find doctors who have interpretation services
Check online for help from province or territory
Based on the government website, there is a lack of help for multilingual minorities looking for healthcare.
This is one of the recommended tools for multilingual minorities to use for finding a doctor.
This tool is simply a list of all the service health providers.There is no way to arrange them in any order based on parameters. There is no way to find a specific location or territory to do the search.
It seems like users have to manually go through the entire list.This tool can be confusing and frustrating to use for non english/french speakers.
Google search fails to provide some key information in the process of finding a doctor that accepts new patients. Although doctor clinic websites can be found by searching “doctors near me”, each clinic requires calling and checking for availability.
This can be problematic for multi-lingual minorities because there would be communication struggles when calling a clinic to check availability. There can also be confusion for the patient when they try to navigate and understand a website that is usually written in english.
This tool is one of the best tools found for finding doctors who accept new patients. The interface is very simple to use by only asking patients about their location.The list of doctor clinics has a “status indicator” that shows which clinics are accepting new patients. There is also information about “walk-in” and “non walk-in” status alongside hours of operation.
Multilingual minorities should be able to use this tool easily. Although this is one of the best tools out there, multilingual minorities would still struggle to find doctors who speak the same language as them. With that said, this tool seems like a step in the right direction.
This service blueprint shows the scenario of a 29 year old Iranian newcomer who attempts to find a doctor. In this scenario, our key user does not have any existing family and friends to get referrals from. By eliminating the possibility of existing family and friends, we create a more consistent scenario where the user is pushed to use the tools available for her.
Throughout the service blueprint, most of the bad experiences come from gathering information. This is an expected result since our user is a non english/french speaker. The primary transmission of information is between the patient and the doctor clinic.
The following seem to be crucial junctions in which there is a poor transmission of information to the patient.
1. The patient learning about her options of doctor clinics to approach.
2. The patient learning about a clinic’s availability prior contacting the clinic.
3. The patient communicating with the receptionist at the clinic.
These 3 became the core touchpoints that are aimed to be improved through our service design proposal.
My service design concept is designed to help non english/french speakers find available doctors that accept new patients. This service concept aims to improve the experience of finding a doctor by tackling our 3 touchpoints.
Doctogether.com has a community driven system were users can join communities that speak the same language as them. Community members can contribute to a public group forums (similar to posting on a facebook group wall) or by directly communicating with other members.The aim of these communities is to have members help other members with health related matters such as finding an available doctor that speaks the same language as them.
These communities can serve as a big source of assistance for newcomers who don’t speak english/french and don’t have anyone in Canada for assistance. These community spaces are incorporated with a doctor clinic search engine making it easy for members to recommend a certain clinic’s profile or location to others.
The infrastructure of this concept is built on a doctor clinic search engine similar to finddoctorbc.ca. This means users can input their location and get a list of doctor clinics with an availability status. Availability statuses come from the clinic’s active participation in doctogether.com to make sure their clinic’s profile is up to date information.
Users can get recommendations from connecting with members of the same ethnic community. Users can also use the doctogether.com search engine without having to engage in the communities. Users can also get information about clinic recommendations through forum post that others have asked the community.
Users can use the availability status on doctogether.com’s search engine to get an idea about a clinic’s availability without having to call the clinic to check.
By participating in communities that speak the same language as the user, users can comfortably ask for doctors that also speak the same language. The community aspect of doctorgether.com makes it easier to find a doctor that is from the same ethnic background as the user thereby able to speak the same language.
“Does the website support multiple languages?”
“Clarification is needed of term walk-in clinic because some clinics wall themselves walk-in clinics but you still need an appointment.”
“Need clarification of how user finds doctogether.com.”
“How does community guidance work? (a community blog, private chat, channels, articles?”
“What happens if there is no clinic with the same language?”
“Can people help each other on things other than medical related matters?"
The following prototype is a very rough design of how doctorgether.com’s landing page would look like. The purpose of this prototype is to create a foundation which can be further developed.
The objective of this project was to design a service for our identified problem. The UI design of the website itself will be a future project that will build on the research and foundation created throughout this service design project.
Getting active contribution from doctor clinics is a key aspect in making doctogether.com an effective place to connect patients with available doctors.
Doctors are encouraged to participate in the communities by answering questions and concerns.
Staff at doctor clinics are encouraged to keep an up to date profile about their clinic. This would require making sure key information such as availability, phone number, address and website are up to date.
Further user testing and research will help create an incentive for doctor clinics to participate in doctogether.com.
This step is crucial in creating a product that is useful and effective in helping doctorgether.com provide the value it's designed to provide. Although the service offering has been defined, the detailed design of doctogether.com’s features needs to be tested.
This will start with a prototype version of doctogether.com that will be user tested with our target audience. User testing will make clear which features need further refining and which features need to be removed. An important aspect of doctogether.com that needs user testing is the community contribution systems.
Different methods of community contribution need to be tested for fleshing out the most effective and useful methods. Some of these community contribution methods are:
- group chats
- forum posts
- blog posts
Website Design
Website Development
Service Design
Figma Interactive Prototyping
UI & Visual
Branding
Bachelor of Interaction Design - EmilyCarr University of Art and Design
Bachelor of Science - Simon Fraser University
