My Role
UX Designer, UX Researcher
Tools
Figma, Notion, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator
In collaboration with Sacred Heart Mercy Health Care Center, an Alma College community partner, I developed possible solutions for a problem that arose through my research. Following a design thinking process that involves Sense, Understand, Frame, Ideate, and Iterate, I created a prototype for a community application tailored to healthcare organizations. This application enables them to establish connections, collaborate, and foster meaningful relationships.
Research
I employed a design framework consisting of five key steps to guide my approach. As I sought to identify and refine a problem area for the clinic, I followed these steps making progress and then returning to some steps to ensure that my design would address the underlying issue.
Sense
The initial step was to get a sense of Sacred Heart. My initial knowledge of the Clinic was based on their online presence. So for the first interview I developed questions that would help me get a 'sense' of who they are and their current condition. I wanted to gather context about what I would be working with and gather as much information as possible.
Mind Map: a visual tool used to generate, organize, and explore initial ideas and brainstorm areas to ask questions about. This mind map captures what I knew about Sacred Heart and what I wanted to learn more when I met with the Director.
In the first interview, I was meeting with the director of Sacred Heart. I wanted to know what services they are providing, how religion factors into their organization, and if they have connections with other community organizations.
Questions:
What kinds of health care do you provide?
Where are you providing your resources, the clinic or elsewhere too?
Who is specifically eligible for the services you provide?
What kind of people have taken advantage of your services in the past?
Who is your target / highest priority client?
Do you currently have partnerships or relationships with other organizations such as hospitals, churches, shelters, etc.?
Are there specific resources you have that you want to prioritize?
What’s your top priority task or goal?
What’s your biggest frustration with your current system?
What do you like the most about your current system?
What kinds of health care do you provide?
Where are you providing your resources, the clinic or elsewhere too?
Who is specifically eligible for the services you provide?
What kind of people have taken advantage of your services in the past?
Who is your target / highest priority client?
Do you currently have partnerships or relationships with other organizations such as hospitals, churches, shelters, etc.?
Are there specific resources you have that you want to prioritize?
What’s your top priority task or goal?
What’s your biggest frustration with your current system?
What do you like the most about your current system?
In this phase, the main goal was to build empathy and get an idea of what the clinic does. From the initial interview, I was able to get a sense of what the clinic does, and what their goals are for the future. The biggest takeaway from this interview was that they are wanting a way to better communicate to the community what they do, and why they do it.
Understand
In this step, I want to make sense of the information gathered and dig deeper to understand the situation. I wanted to not have assumptions about what they need and approach the problem with an open mind. This was a way for me to ensure that solutions were grounded in the users' needs and motivations. The goal was to gain a deep understanding of the people who are affected by the problem.
I took the information gathered from the first interview and categorized the notes by "who you are", "what you do", and "your story". This allowed me to organize the information I had gathered. From there I formed new questions for my second interview.
Questions:
Does this information align?
What am I missing?
Who is your target client base?
Are you wanting to create a strong relationship within the Alma community?
Would the clinic benefit from Alma connections?
How do you want to be seen by the Alma community?
What is stopping you from telling your story to the public?
Does this information align?
What am I missing?
Who is your target client base?
Are you wanting to create a strong relationship within the Alma community?
Would the clinic benefit from Alma connections?
How do you want to be seen by the Alma community?
What is stopping you from telling your story to the public?
I conducted a second interview by showing them the information and ensuring my understanding aligned with who they are and what they do. I then asked them questions that would allow me to get more specific information about their problem areas. From this interview, I created insights that would help me frame the problem in the next phase.
Frame
For the next phase, I wanted to look at the problems from different angles and re-frame them into actionable challenges. Here I framed the insights gathered from the previous phases and then prioritized a challenge to focus on.
I conducted a focus group with the clinic director and a few providers. I first walked them through what I have done and the information I had so far and them asked them to do a brainstorming activity. I gave them sticky notes and asked them a series of questions to answer and we discussed their answers together.
I conducted a focus group with the clinic director and a few providers. I first walked them through what I have done and the information I had so far and them asked them to do a brainstorming activity. I gave them sticky notes and asked them a series of questions to answer and we discussed their answers together.
Questions:
What does community mean to you?
Where do you see community within Alma?
What does it mean to feel like you are on an island?
What things make you feel connected in a community?
What does community mean to you?
Where do you see community within Alma?
What does it mean to feel like you are on an island?
What things make you feel connected in a community?
The insights from this focus group allowed me to frame the problem in a "how might we" statement. This question statement allowed me to reframe my insights into opportunity areas and innovate on problems found during user research. It will be the focus for the next phase.
How might we connect Sacred Heart to the health care services in Alma, MI?
Ideate
The goal of the ideate phase is to generate, evaluate, and select ideas to move forward with. I brainstormed possible solutions that could address the problem.
Initial ideas:
- A quiz or game for community members where they would take the quiz and the results would be organizations that could benefit them. Through the quiz, people are connected with organizations, and organizations are connected with people.
- A web application where organizations can input what they are doing in the community.
- A social media/dating application for Alma organizations that would connect similar organizations together.
- A quiz or game for community members where they would take the quiz and the results would be organizations that could benefit them. Through the quiz, people are connected with organizations, and organizations are connected with people.
- A web application where organizations can input what they are doing in the community.
- A social media/dating application for Alma organizations that would connect similar organizations together.
After evaluating the ideas I decided to move forward with creating a web application, as it would address many other their issues. I decided that the application would be healthcare specific. My next step was researching the healthcare community in Alma, MI. I found all the available healthcare organizations available in Alma and how they relate and are connected to each other. I created a few different maps and visualizations of them and finally created a community care map.
A visualization of health care available in Alma, MI. Sacred Heart falls between Primary Care and Mental Health as they provide both services. A majority of these organizations are located within the MyMichigan Medical Center campus.
Solution
Iterate
The goal of this phase was to create a digital representation of the design concept. I created a prototype of the application with Figma.
For this application, I wanted to focus on simplicity and ease of use. I knew that this application would be used by people with different proficiency levels in working with technology. I also had inspiration from platforms and websites that prioritize community and collaboration, such as Slack and Discord. Additionally, social media applications like Instagram, as well as dating apps that offer suggestions based on shared values and interests, also served as inspirations.
CareUnite is a web application designed to establish connections, collaborate, and foster meaningful relationships. The dashboard "My Community" provides a central place for all of the features, displaying community activity, notifications, and more. An organization has a profile and then individuals, such as administration and providers are added as members. The calendar provides a space for posting events happening in the community. There is a discussion board where users can create posts, share articles and engage in conversation. Lastly, the "Connect" page allows for connection between organizations. Here organizations with similar values and specialties are suggested. A user can view the organization's profile and connect with them, creating a healthcare network.
Sacred Heart wants to feel more connected within the Alma Community in order to fulfill its purpose of showing mercy through healthcare. This application can help them achieve this through increased outreach and improved collaboration and communication which can lead them to helping a greater population of people.
During discussions with the clinic director, it became clear that one of his primary concerns was enhancing public awareness and attracting more patients. However, without utilizing this framework, one may have simply focused on only marketing the clinic. By following this framework, I was able to uncover a more fundamental issue: the clinic lacked a connection to the broader healthcare community, which was contributing to their challenges with public outreach and patient acquisition.