The digital healthcare platform - Android (part 2)
TeleClinic GmbH | Android appProblem
In a digital era where every answer is one online search away, people with health concerns find themselves turning to Dr. Google in their quest for medical advice. This seems to be the fastest and easiest way for anyone that does not have the time or energy required to get an appointment and sit at the doctor’s office for hours. However, in a sea of countless articles and forums flooded by self-proclaimed doctors, how can people trust that the information they read online is reliable? How can they safely self-diagnose their issues without wrongly matching their symptoms to some incurable disease?
Solution
TeleClinic is a digital platform that connects patients and doctors by web or mobile app. Users can directly call doctors via phone or videocall from anywhere, at anytime. They can also use the platform to safely store and share their medical files, as well as track the progress of their health over time.
Requirements
At the start of this project, the first version of the TeleClinic app has already been live and used for a few weeks. After tackling the unexpected bugs, it was time for TeleClinic to start thinking about the next features that would take its product one step closer to becoming the one-stop health solution it aimed to be. Based on feedback from stakeholders, customers (health insurances) and users (insurants), it was clear that the personalization of the product was the most requested feature.
The personalization of the app consists in providing the user with a space - the “Health account” where they can record and track their health values, medical treatments and medication plans. In addition to that, the “File wallet“ feature had received some negative feedback by users who reported not understanding what they would be uploading to the storage. To clear up any ambiguity, the “File wallet“ would be moved as a sub-feature of the new “Health account“, making it clear that the space is for anything relative to personal data of the user. The purpose of this project was thus to design the new feature and integrate it within the exiting app.
The second part of this project was destined as a proof of concept to be used in meetings held with stakeholders and customers. The idea for this feature - called “Back coach program“ - was that users can personalize their TeleClinic experience by enrolling into health programs supervised by professionals (e.g. back training, nutrition, etc). In order to gather enough feedback and assess the customers’ interest in the suggested feature, I was required to design a prototype for a back training program offering users a set of training exercises and their related tracking values.
Competitive research
Both Android and iOS app stores are full of many health and activity tracking apps. So before starting on any design for the “Health account“, I looked up some of the popular apps to get a better understanding of what the market already offered.
The three apps I looked at were Google Fit, Fitbit and Samsung Health. These latter presented similarities in their fun and playful interfaces. In terms of functionalities, they all allowed their users to track their physical activities and nutritional progress. Moreover, they relied on internal or external sensors to automatically track some of the health values. The use of senses for more accurate tracking certainly presented an immense advantage to the fitness apps. In addition to that, the users could personalize their apps by choosing what they desired to track.
It was important to keep in mind that these apps were fitness apps as opposed to TeleClinic, a telemedicine app. Given the medical approach of our product, the main different for the TeleClinic app to focus on was its access to actual doctors. In other words, the “Health account“ would not only allow the user to track their values, but would also serve as their medical identity when communicating with doctors. This would provide the medical staff with all the necessary background health information they may need during a consultation. From the user’s perspective, it would be as if the doctor has known them for a long time and would allow for a more comfortable and efficient consultation.
Wireframes
I moved on to the creation of wireframes in order to think through the design and ensure the integration within the existing app. I used the wireframes to get feedback from the rest of the team and iterate accordingly.
Paper sketches for the Health Account
Paper sketches for the Back Coach ProgramHigh-fidelity mockups
Next, I moved on to create high-fidelity mockups for the “Health account“ design.
As for the “Back Coach Program“, I first created the high-fidelity mockups for the new feature. Then, my marketing colleague took over and created a prototype on InVision gathering all the screens for a scenario showcasing the new functionality. The prototype was then used to get feedback from health professionals and stakeholders.
Learning
Although this project was a continuation of an app I had already worked on and gotten very familiar with, it was still a different learning experience. Designing within the constraints of the existing design really made me conscious of the consistency of the application as a whole in every step of the project.
My favorite part about this project was the recognition and positive feedback we got for the work we did. When we updated the app, users and health insurances reported that the changes made the app feel more complete and more “like a health app“. The doctors working with us also gave us positive feedback for the new changes stating that they now had access to all the patient information that they could need in a consultation.
The TeleClinic Android app has been live since May 2016 and has since been downloaded over 1400 times and enjoys a Google Play rating of 4.56 (data from April 2017). The overall project is still ongoing as the app gets regular feature and interface updates to support new product requirements and ensure continuous digital healthcare for its users.