FOR HPV —
Vaccine appointments shouldn’t be more stressful than the disease itself.
DURATION MY ROLE Personal Project
Jul - Oct 2020 (3 months) Experience Design,
User Research,
Prototyping
Problem
How can we improve the process of getting an HPV vaccine for the people that intend to get vaccinated given the unintegrated information, the scarce supply, and the hidden safety risks?
Solution
After rounds of brainstorming and design iterations, I designed an integrated app and appointment system that provides HPV information and allows users to register and manage appointments, supports overall progress tracking, and provides history vaccination follow-up.
01. Smart Recommendation
The recommendation engine learns about the user's preferences and needs by the medical history they filled while signing up, providing them with everything they need to know about HPV.
Users can choose to skip filling in medical history, and the system will automatically recommend popular articles.
Based on the user's selections, we provide a suitable doctor to help the user through online consulting.
If users want to know more about HPV, some recommended aspects of HPV are also listed on the welcome page, and users can click on them to know more.
02. Welcome Page/Progress Tracking
The full process of the service can be tracked on the welcome page.
Tap on the progress card to view appointment details
Users can also check HPV related articles through three major categories or click on the magnifier button to search for information.
In-app notification of the progress and queuing status will be sent to the user accordingly
03.Pre-Register
Users can save time for asking by using pre-register. This function will estimate users' queueing time and notify users when the vaccine is available.
Users can choose a suitable hospital according to a preferred vaccine type, price, and area.
Pre-register will be available when the vaccine is out of stock.
The hospital’s vaccine stock is updated in realtime.
04.Appointment Booking
Users can choose the date and time they want to be vaccinated. After the appointment is booked, a reminder will be sent via the user’s preferred ways. Users can also return to the homepage to view the appointment details
Users can view photos, introductions, and reviews of the hospitals conveniently.
Users can choose to pay online or pay at the hospital
Users can write a review for the experience after the vaccination is completed.
PROCESS
In this project, the overall goal of my research is to find solutions and ideas to help the hospitals improve the service of HPV Vaccination. Through the whole process of the project, I actively engaged the target user population by conducting interviews, secondary research, prototyping, and multiple rounds of usability testing to understand their pain points and needs to inform the design decisions.
RESEARCH
BACKGROUND RESEARCH
Vaccination should be an effortless task, but for the HPV vaccine that has just been introduced to China, the procedures to be vaccinated seem to be endless. Because the effectiveness of the HPV vaccine is better for people at their younger ages, I believe that the efficiency in the vaccination process should be a high priority.
To find out the biggest problem people have during the process of getting an HPV vaccine, and require further research and improvement to help provide better vaccination service, I started by broadly looking at different aspects online, including purchasing methods, questions about the vaccination, vaccination experiences, etc. Upon the online research, I found:
30,000+
people have followed the HPV Vaccine topic on Zhihu
200,000+
discussions were made about the HPV Vaccine on Zhihu, topics including safety issues, ways of getting vaccinated, the side effects, etc.
50,000+
questions were raised on a physician consultation website, among which 3,000+ were related to the Gardasil® 9
STAKEHOLDERS MAP
To identify the stakeholders who have the greatest impact on our focus area, I created the stakeholders map.
Selected Stakeholders for Research
After further looking at the potential stakeholders that’ll be involved in this project, I plan to conduct research with both the target users (People who plan to get vaccinated and people who want to learn about the HPV Vaccine) and the hospital staff.
GENERATIVE RESEARCH
I spoke with 7 stakeholders - people who have already been vaccinated, people who have the will to vaccinate, and three medical staff who works at the CDC - for generative interviews. I aimed to understand the process of vaccination from searching for information to the last dose. I found that:
● Finding 1
For hospital officials, the process of HPV vaccination, especially Gardasil® 9, is cumbersome and increases the work intensity of the person in charge.
● Finding 2
The process of HPV vaccination is not continuous. After the first vaccination, patients need to record the time and schedule the second/third shots in advance. If the patient doesn’t schedule their appointment months ahead, the subsequent vaccination cannot be carried out.
After conducting seven generative interviews, I designed a survey to gather more quantitative data to make objective evaluations of the problems in the vaccination process and collect more thoughts to help us generate insights. In the end, I got about 50 respondents, 29 of the participants were between 18-25 years old, and 65% of them were college students.
From the open-ended questions, the participants showed various frustrations experienced while booking the HPV vaccine:
It is difficult to find a way to book the HPV vaccine, and information on the hospitals that have the vaccine is lacking.
Gardasil® 9 is often out of stock, and the hospital will not remind them after replenishment.
Patients can't make an appointment for the second vaccination immediately after the first vaccination is completed. They can only remember the approximate time themselves and make the appointment by calling the hospital.
78%
of participants think that their HPV-related knowledge is not enough, and most of them want to learn more about the HPV vaccine.
86%
of participants who want to get vaccinated have not yet been vaccinated because they cannot make an appointment/do not know how to make an appointment
72%
of participants ranked the places of vaccination and the appointment method as the thing they want to know the most
68%
of participants hope to be vaccinated in public hospitals and 83% of them think that public hospitals are more reliable and safe
● Finding 3
The inability to make an appointment for vaccination and lack of knowledge about HPV are two major problems people have now.
ANALYSIS
I synthesized the collected data from the interviews and survey into an affinity map to help form insights to group related insights across our research and understand common themes.
● Insight 4
More efficient ways to schedule for the HPV Vaccine are needed.
● Insight 5
Since Gardasil® 9 is short in supply and often out of stock, it has become particularly difficult to book. The process of booking Gardasil® 9 especially needs to be improved.
PERSONA
Next, I thought about the kinds of users that would benefit from these features.
Based on my insights and observations from the research methods, I created two personas that captured the essence of our users and their characteristics.
● Insight 6
Long waiting times are a common frustration for users during hospital consultations and booking for vaccines.
JOURNEY MAPPING
Using our research, I formed a journey map consisting of stages, actions, emotions, user goals, problems, and opportunities associated with the process.
● Insight 7
I realized that there are still many areas in need of improvement in each step of vaccination. And, the most crucial one is finding a hospital with Gardasil® 9 in stock and successfully making an appointment for three doses of Gardasil® 9.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
To understand how the vaccination is currently being addressed, I looked at our direct and indirect competitors. None of them addresses the entire vaccination process.
● Insight 8
In general, nearly all the current platforms provide HPV-related information and popular science articles, and people are willing to leave messages in the comment area for consultations. But almost no platform can provide a complete HPV vaccine appointment process.
With these insights in mind, the design challenge was defined as:
DESIGN
Need Validation
I started my ideation process by creating specific design questions I found from my research and brainstormed ideas for each of them. Then I placed all my research materials on the wall to identify breakdowns, needs, design ideas, and questions
Sketches
After the generative research, I conducted a ‘Walk-the-wall’ activity (placed all our research materials on the wall) to identify breakdowns, needs, design ideas, and questions. Then I created 6 storyboards based on customers’ needs I identified and conducted 15-speed dating sessions for the purpose of need validation and ideation.
Among all the wild ideas, I picked some most promising ones to generate scenarios and storyboards and executed speed dating with potential users to evaluate users’ needs. Below are some of my selected ideas.
Evaluation ROUND 1
I conducted speed dating sessions to evaluate the six ideas. Through the speed dating sessions, we found that our participants are very optimistic about the ideas of getting HPV related information(02), doctor consultation(03), and making an appointment for vaccination(05). After the voting session, I decided to develop an application that could provide HPV-related information, online doctor consultation, and HPV vaccination appointment.
Paper Prototyping
My prototype aims to display the features for people who want to get the HPV Vaccination to find a nearby hospital with HPV vaccines and make an appointment for vaccination, as well as features for people to find needed information. Moreover, my prototype shows a clear user flow when navigating through each interface. 5 key screens are:
#1 - List of articles
#2 - Consultation, allowing users to contact doctors online
#3 - Hospital list with 3 pop-up windows for showing hospitals according to different needs
#4 - Hospitals detail information
#5 - My schedule (The schedule of the 3 doses of the HPV shot)
Evaluation ROUND 2 and iteration
After the low-fi prototype, I ran several 5-second tests to get feedback about the interface and design flow. I also got constructive feedback and suggestions which helped me get lots of insights and findings.
Based on the previous research and findings, I developed mid-fidelity wireframe on these features, tested, and improved them according to the feedback we collected. I also used the mid-fi prototype to simulate the experience with my product for the participants. After the usability testing, based on the notes I took during the sessions, I reiterated the mid-fi screens.
The changes are as follows:
Added a ‘Medical History’ page right after the login page, so users can set the default preference to receive personalized article recommendations
Added a ‘Notification Setting’ page after the login page
Added appointment information on the welcome page
Change the "area" filter to a full-screen overlay, allowing users to see the map and search for location
Added a ‘confirmation’ page, users can confirm their appointment before payment
Added an estimated waiting time on the ‘Pre Register’ page
Added the profile page, so users can change their personal information if needed
TESTING & ITERATION
FINAL DESIGN
Welcome to FORHPV
Home Page
Progress Tracking
Search Results
Article
Q&A
LIST OF HOSPITALS.
“AREA” FILTER
Product Detail
Reviews
Reflection
Reflection
I used data-driven approaches throughout the whole design and development process, from exploring innovative opportunities, validating hypotheses, building tasks for the testing. The quantitative data enable an efficient way to see the opportunity of the product and gain a sense of users' interaction.
Next Goal
To improve the service and fulfil the needs of both patients and staffs, this app alone is not enough as it is mainly designed for patients. In the near future, I will also design an integrated system for the hospital to better connect and manage different appointments.