Where do we start?
To get to the core of TCH’s mission to their patients, we outlined our time and action plans before speaking to our client:
Discovery
We began diving deep into all the business service lines
The Challenge
The singular problem we’re trying to solve is modernization. This applies to multiple aspects of the site – from creative and UX to analytics, platforms, and tools (Invoca, AB testing platform, automation).
From a creative standpoint, modernization could mean a more contemporary look and feel, enhanced architecture for improved discoverability of key site sections, surfacing of UVP content, streamlined form/find pages, and a design that humanizes the staff and surfaces the achievements, outcomes and stories that differentiate TCH from their competitive set. Lastly, modernization might also mean future-proofing for when CMS and other tech advancements are rolled out in the near future.
Limitations
Due to HIPAA regulations on data privacy, we are limited in diving deeper into current audiences’ profiles in terms of needs, attitudes, and beliefs for personalization. We must derive audience insights through taking the limited data found through Google Analytics today and overlay personas of those in the same gender, age group, and location category from syndicated sources.
so how might we provide an intuitive, innovative digital solution for patients, caregivers, health-curious, and professionals around the world who are seeking real-time expert healthcare resources?
Proposed Principles - Our Mission
Define Vision
After aligning some of these early discovery thinking with our clients and learning more about the groundbreaking services TCH provides, our goal was to ensure every visitor experiences this exact feeling when they land on every BSL sites.
which brings us to one of our most important questions:
How should the websites for Texas Children’s Hospitals and its Business Service Lines interface with one another?
Should we keep them consolidated? or maintain as a network of sites?
Via the network, we provide brand cohesion across business service lines while letting the unique expertise of each shine through.
Creative Concept
Using the 5 guiding principles established earlier, the creative team hopped into work sessions to build directions and tone. The core values to consider were:
Within just a span of one week, our amazing design team came up with 5 moving ideas for our clients. Once the overall branding vision was set, we needed to decide on how the color treatment was going to communicate across all BSLs since it was determined that all marketing should utilize a core brand palette without unique colors assigned to each business service line.
Site Experience
Working around client’s business needs and shifts in priority, the site structure has become an ever evolving matter for this project, below is a WIP proposed sitemap as of Jan 2023.
Wayfinding Pre-design
At this stage, we are still working on 1. conceptually building foundational blueprint but sketching out how web experiences can begin to come together in design. 2. Create atomic design to support unique content needs and to be deployed across the network of sites. 3. Another central aim now is to start stress-testing component library: define the number of components that can be repurposed and adapted to branding and feature set of BSLs.
Design
After 1 year since the inception of this project, the team finally entered the design phase and began fine-tuning the building blocks of our key pages and global design systems. Time to release 1 target date: 6 months. I want to delve further into some of the design solutions that I am particularly proud of in this project, starting with provider search.
Provider Search
Current state pain points
Upon conducting an initial evaluation of the current state, I have identified several elements on this page that would greatly benefit from updates in order to improve user experiences.
- Lack of search functionality, with only one filter option (choose specialty) available, to narrow search results
- Only the doctor’s name and photo are displayed on the cards which is insufficient as a profile preview
- The visual style of the cards is inconsistent, with outdated photos and the use of different colors for doctors’ names, which can be confusing
- Nothing on this page communicates that these doctors represent TCH and all the BSLs as a network
Next, I conducted competitor research to gain insights into the filter facets commonly used by hospitals and other helpful information to display on provider cards. With a mobile-first approach prioritized to cater to the majority of our user base, here are a few examples from the competitor/heuristic reviews:
The heuristic review aided me in identifying a few search functionalities to implement on the updated site. Subsequently, after a couple of rounds of requirement gathering with our client, I collaborated with our data architect and product manager to analyze the mappable fields from existing and future-state data. Our goal was to not only cross-reference the feasibility of new filtering facets but also to understand the average adoption rate by profile and the variation of content type based on the provider’s type.
To start drafting my ideas, I first listed out all the searchable data I wanted to include. Next, I organized them by hierarchy into basic and advanced filters. Finally, I explored the interactivity that best suited the type of input.
After receiving feedback from our stakeholders on the importance of search by location and facility type, I worked with our internal team through several rounds of iterations and reviews. Eventually, I settled on incorporating natural language into the search/filter form. Instead of focusing on the internal-facing “type of facility,” I translated it to “care provided,” which presents users with a list of more relatable healthcare services to search for.
The next challenge is determining how much information to display on the doctor’s cards while promoting scannability and avoiding cognitive overload. Through competitor research, I’ve seen a range of good to best practices, but ultimately, the institution’s decision will be the deciding factor. I explored all the possibilities, from the lightest to the heaviest load of information, for both desktop and mobile views. Eventually, the client chose an option that satisfied all their business needs.
After working through all the UX thinking, next is applying visual design to these pages. Below are some of our finalized design solutions that serve as our final deliverables.
Desktop view
Mobile view
Provider card study
Impact
The final product was a significant improvement over its initial state, despite facing challenges such as incomplete data sets, evolving business priorities, and limitations with the YEXT search tool. To address several design issues, I deconstructed all the components on the page and implemented the following solutions:
- Created robust search and filtering functionalities to improve the doctor search experience
- Upgraded provider cards by previewing the top three content details
- Revamped the visual design with elements from our design system
- Improved credibility and connectedness for all BSLs under the TCH network by including engaging visuals, informative copy, and ensuring complete coverage of all available healthcare services.
Other Design Solutions
Here are some other design challenges and solutions that I worked on during our R1 design phase. If you’re interested in learning more about any of them, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.
To Be Continued
In December 2022, our team met the target for Release one and is now progressing towards the final handoff by June 2023. The client is extremely pleased and excited with the results thus far, including an 11% increase in the organic conversion rate since the initial release a few months ago, which can be attributed to effective awareness tactics across multiple marketing channels such as TV, OOH, radio, and display. From the perspective of TCH’s business service lines, we have also identified the following key findings:
- Hospital and Pediatrics services continue to experience a positive trend in conversion visits.
- Hospital, Pavilion for Women, and Pediatrics services have witnessed a decrease in website visits, which aligns with historical patterns.
- Urgent Care services are observing a consistent decline in in-person appointment conversions. This was an expected outcome as we encouraged Urgent Care users to opt for Virtual Care, resulting in a significant 31% increase in visits MoM
- Pediatrics services have seen a notable 14% increase in conversion rates MoM. Among the various channels, organic social and organic search have shown the largest increases in conversion rates, with respective increments of 22% and 55%.
Overall, the team’s efforts have yielded positive outcomes, meeting the client’s expectations and driving growth in various service areas.
Personally this is by far the most challenging and rewarding project I was involved in for a number of reasons:
- Working with a large team (100+) allowed me to gain insights from different disciplines as we accomplished various objectives throughout the project.
- Consistently steered and evolved our design solutions based on user research findings and UX metrics, even when advocating for our choices with the client.
- Experienced with a systematic approach for team-wide planning, operation, collaboration, execution, and handoff in order to bring solutions to a range of challenges for our client’s business needs.
- Growing and adapting an atomic design system that allows flexibility and scalability to accommodate the foreseeable changes in the client’s business.
Stay tuned for further updates as we closely monitor the website performance after the release of the second phase!