Pain Point

Finding an available doctor can be challenging in Canada's multilingual healthcare system. It is especially difficult for immigrants who don't speak fluent English or French.
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Despite Canada being home to millions of multilingual minorities, there is a lack of support for multilingual minorities in finding a healthcare provider that speaks their native language and is available to help. As a results, many rely on poor search methods or word-of-mouth to find a doctor.

Why this matters?

Helping multilingual minorities find the right health service can be a life changing quality of life improvement.

A study from Canadian Medical Association Journal pointed to the importance of language between a doctor and their patient such that: Patients who speak the same language as their doctor are 54% less likely to die or experience sever health outcomes.

This insight became a core pillar for this project

Link to article source

👤 User Journey

To better understand the experience of an immigrant trying to find a doctor, I created a service blueprint of an Iranian newcomer setting out to find a doctor in Canada.

The journey revealed issues in 2 critical touch points between the immigrand and the healthcare system:

1. Touchpoint 1 - Discovery
   

   The user tried Google search leading to confusing for the user since she had to open and scan each clinic's website manually.
   

2. Touchpoint 2 - Booking an appointment
   

   Once the user found a clinic, they made a call. However, with a language barrier between the immigrant and receptionist, the call was not effective and ended in our user hanging up
   

User Frustrations

"I don't know where to start."

"I can't tell if the doctor speaks my language or not"

"I don't want to call and risk feeling embarrassed if I don't understand anything."

"I wish someone could just show me who to talk to."

💡 Design Principles

I established 3 core principles as a guide to my design process.

1. Language-first logic:
   

   As the first priority, the app's core search feature should focus on matching patients and doctors based on language.
   

2. Accessibility
   

   The app should be simple and easy to use by anyone who has basic English literacy at any age group.
   

3. Simplicity of action
   

   Every action of the app should be useful with direct outcomes such as finding, calling, and bookmarking.
   

Competitive Analysis

To start, I looked at other alternatives available for finding doctors online. I found 3 major doctor-finding apps known as the most popular options based on usage base and ratings.

Zocdoc

This app offers clean visual design. However, the onboarding is bloated with many unnecessary in asking for insurance information and symptoms before showing any results of what the user will get at the end.

Dr+ on Demand

This app also features a sleek design and interphase however its purpose is more geared towards setting up consultation and getting consultation payments, rather than finding available doctors

Maple

Maple seems to be the most comprehensive app from the 3. It is a multi purposed app for finding doctors and maintaining a relationship with them.

Although capable. the onboarding is very long (10+ pages) which ends with a paywall to continue. Without knowing about payments at the start, users can feel frustrated from giving the app all the information it asked for only to see they need to start paying to see the app give them anything useful.

Conclusion

Each app has its strengths, however they feel bloated and complicated during onboarding with priorities set on getting users to pay before getting any results.

In addition, the 3 apps had no language support for non english speakers.

Solution

A simple mobile app that aims to get patients on a call with a clinic that supports their language.

The app is designed with minimal onboarding, minimal text, and useful visuals to guide a user who may have limited English capabilities.

Key Design Principles

🌎 Easy to follow interphase

Minimal text and lots of visuals to guide users who only know basic English.

Key Design Decisions

Design Phase

Wireframing

I started with basic a very basic wireframe to explore the user journey:
onboarding → doctor search → results → calling/saving/reminding
‍This allowed me to understand the app's logic and what elements need to be present on each screen along the journey from onboarding to executing primary task.

Visual Design

As the first step, I worked on the visual design of the most complex screen, the home screen. The design of the home screen was iterated into its final form. From there, I worked on other simpler screens of the app by applying the same established visual design language as the home page.

Concept Video

User test, feedback, and improving UX

Through a blind user test, the app was tested by multiple users ranging from young adults to older adults. Testers were asked to navigate the app without instruction. Note was taken of any user confusion and hickups.

UX improvement of showing doctor results

Initially, doctor search results were shown in widgets with information such as doctor type, language, availability, and links. This interphase was found to be confusing with too many visual elements. The interphase was improved to a clearer container with better contrast and less information clutter.

Adding a visual navigation for steps

To make sure users aren't discouraged from completing the onboarding, a visual progress tracker was added to show how quickly they can get started.

Intuitive and visual interactions

The UI was design to be easy to understand with visual interactions make following the steps easy with minimal English literacy.

Prototype

Each screen was linked and animated in Figma.

Results and Outcome

User testing with my key users revealed positive impact of Doctogether's language first approach:

• Feeling empowered and relieved: from the ability to filter doctors based on language.
  

• Easy task completion: Testers were able to easily complete onboarding and find their list of doctors.
  

• Understanding the process despite language limitations: Users felt the imagery and simple language used in the app made it easy to understand and navigate.