Stryker + UE Group
A healthcare application that delivers surgery updates in real-time
Stryker Instruments is one of the world’s leading medical device companies. We also partnered with UEGroup, a User Experience Design agency that works with outside companies, like Stryker, to help improve their user experiences.
Role: UX Researcher & Designer
Skills: User Research, Interviews, Affinity Diagram, Competitive Analysis, Low - High Fidelity Prototyping and Wireframing, Usability Testing, Experience Mapping
Tools: Figma & Invision
Team: 5 UX Designers
Duration: August - December 2019
Overview
Project Details
My Role
On this project, I was a co-lead to my team and worked closely with our sponsors Matt Giffels (Principle UX/UI Designer at Stryker) and Annie Pugliese (Senior UX Designer at UE Group). My main responsibilities were to conduct a competitive and comparative analysis of similar existing products, conduct in-depth interviews with our user demographic, develop a journey map, and aid in the design of our wireframes. As a team lead, I also helped with the structure and planning of the project and helped make sure the social aspect of our team dynamic was running smoothly.
Problem & Goal
Family and friends have long waits at hospitals during surgical procedures [and often] experience elevated levels of anxiety and boredom. Increasingly, surgical devices are computerized and networked. This ushers in the possibility of providing updates from the surgical suite, either automatically or manually, that may reduce the anxiety of those waiting.
Timeline
Research: Literature Review & Interviews
Our team chose to conduct a literature review as we felt it would help us better identify the current issues users are facing within our project scope. Our main goal of this review was to gain a better understanding of how users are currently experiencing the hospital waiting room.
Lit Review Takeaways
- Applications with similar features currently exist
- Those waiting prefer to have continuous updates throughout the entire process
- Stress and Anxiety were the common themes surrounding this experience, usually stemming from lack of information
- Current methods of updating information on the status of the surgery are very short and vague
Journey Map
After our literature review, we Affinity Diagrammed our findings which then helped us to build out a journey map of both the family and the patient
Interviews
The goal of our interviews was to gain a better understanding of the first hand emotions and experiences our user groups face when they or a loved one is going into surgery along with how they specifically had received updates and information throughout the process
Interview Takeaways & Ideation
Lack of updates, many of our interviewees mentioned how they received very little updates and had to be the ones to ask for more information
Timing and amount of updates wanted varied from every 30 minutes to every hour and so on.
Lots of variety in the degree of updates wanted. Some desired frequent detailed updates and others just wanted to know the surgery was running smoothly.
Experience Map
Based on our findings and ideation from our interviews, we were able to develop an experience map to help us see where we could implement or app into this process
Prototype Designs
I was in charge of creating our low-mid fidelity wireframes to help show and test our general ideas for this application:
HIPPA PIN LOGIN
SURGERY ONBOARDING
SURGERY TIMELINE
IN-DEPTH INFORMATION
Testing
We conducted usability tests of our mid-fidelity prototypes in Figma with three participants. We had our users speak aloud while following scenarios and prompts from team testers. We decided to conduct testing to understand what aspects of our app may need to be refined before moving into high fidelity and understand the mental model of a user of our app.
Main Takeaways
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Use of multiple pins confused users as to which category they fell into
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Users were intrigued by the “Meet the Team” section of the Patient Profile page, and showed interest in being able to click on a team member and learn more about them
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The stage overview page was well-received; users appreciated the more in-depth glimpse into a specific stage of surgery and seeing relevant updates to that stage
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Sign-up process for either the patient or family/friend that wants to receive the updates. A HIPAA safe pin is also required to be able to access the information.
Settings allow for the user to customize the frequency at which they receive the updates. This allows them to view as little or as many updates as they choose that would help manage their stress.
The applications main page provides a summary of the surgery, group members who can see the information, the current status of the surgery and a surgery timeline that is updating in real time.
Final Designs
Here is a few of the final designs for our mobile application:
Reflection
Overall, this project was one of my favorites I have ever done. It really made me realize how much I enjoy healthcare UX and designing impactful experiences. This project really challenged my research and prototyping skills and I was really able to see myself grow as a designer with this project. This project also really allowed me to showcase my project management and team-building skills.
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