Northwind
Achieving health goals with simplified medical task management
Role
UX Designer, Product Manager, Engagement Lead
Northwind
Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Lead Software Engineer
Duration
2 Months
About
Northwind is a B2B & B2C company that specializes in helping physicians and clinics deliver medications to their patients. Recently, they launched a new program called Clinical Blueprint to help patients with chronic diseases such as smoking and diabetes to track their health and medications.
Our team met with NW weekly for feedback and presentations. Each week, we designed and reviewed a new feature. At the end of the two months, they were ready to take the features into development.
Outcome
I was the UX designer on the project and created the product prototypes that met the client's satisfaction and needs. I also lent support to their engineering team to ensure that these features would be able to be develop.
Blueprint Home
Questionnaires
Health Tracking
Milestones/Messages
Solution + Prototypes
Process
We broke down the new page into key parts:
To-Do List
Questionnaires
Health Tracking
Milestones/Messages
Each week, we designed wireframes and prototypes for presentation. Taking into their feedback, we reiterated and presented again and moved on to the next feature.
Approach: To-Do List
When designing the to-do list, the tasks were urgent and had to be completed. Because of this importance, this would be the first feature the user would see when landing on their specific blueprint page. These tasks could update quarterly or annually depending on patients.
The to-dos were necessary and unique to each patient. This required for a design that could transferrable to each patient and for different blueprints in the future. Your progress should be trackable based off how many items were completed.
Tapping into the to-do list would lead into a deeper look into your progress and let you manage different tasks. You could also see your history or any notes that were added from health professionals. Because these tasks were so vital, we also created reminder widgets for the home page for more gateways to completing your tasks.
Approach: Questionnaires
Instead of being redirected to the website, users could access their specific wellness questionnaires and check-ins from multiple areas in the app. The easiest way would be through your to-do list but we included widgets on the homepage as well. These were drawer interactions to imply that these questionnaires and forms didn’t take long.
Here’s an example of a questionnaire for quarterly progress. A progress bar let the user know how long the questionnaire would be and for the most part, they were relatively short. We also included questionnaire widgets on other pages so you could go into them quicker.
Approach: Health Tracking
Below the To-Do list, we included charts that monitored certain health levels and charts. For the diabetes blueprint, it was A1C. We designed an overview to display the latest results and changes from the previous test.
In this design, we refrained from using negative language such as "bad" or "abnormal" so we wouldn’t discourage users on their health journey, but we also had to be clear on how the user was doing. Terms such "On track" could vary for users and could be customized as such.
In this design, we used color-coding for a more detailed looked into the charts. We could see our progress over the last year and how the user levels were moving. We wanted to also refrain from using negative harsh colors like red and used warning colors like yellow instead. Below the chart, an A1C history described their results and notes that were taken.
Approach: Milestones/Messages
The last goal we had was to stay motivated with their blueprints progress and help users keep in touch with their health professionals. At the bottom of the blueprints page, we added Milestones as simple as “first login” to encourage positivity as they got started. These would be encouraging points along the user journey.
Finally, a contact at the bottom of the page was placed as an easy way to message their health professionals. We included their entire team and also a general contact.
To send a message, a drawer interaction led into the messaging part of the app. Users would be connected to a healthcare professional afterwards. Additionally, we suggested other features to instill more motivation such as creating informational areas to educate users and draw in participation. Programs or info sessions with topics such as nutritional practices and daily activities could bring users together and provide educational content.
Reflections
Throughout the project, I thought about user retention and designing for user to feel accountable for their actions. There were ways we could make certain tasks easier for the user, but ultimately it was up to them to keep track of their health progress, as this was a voluntary program. Retaining users at a high rate comes from incorporating solutions to their pain points. Without the reasons why they wanted to use the app and the problems challenging them, we could not move forward with successful design.