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Puja Parikh
Project tasks
Product Thinking, User Research, Information Architecture, Ideation, Wireframing, Visual Design, Prototyping, User Testing
Project role
UX Designer, UI Engineer
Project timeline
6 Mos. (2022)
Client
Puja T. Parikh
A journey in redesigning a problematic web experience and defining a new booking experience for patients.
Overview
Tasked with the challenge of solving one of the largest pain points of Puja's patients—booking appointments online. Eliminating friction and enhancing the rate of patient bookings.
Product thinking
A preliminary discussion with Puja helped me to understand what was working well, what could be improved, paint points, and the plan for her Practice going forward.
In laying the groundwork for this project, it was important to understand where Puja currently stood with her Brand. The first iteration of her website was in 2019, in which I developed a simple landing page experience. The second iteration was a project I was not involved with, but during that iteration she rebranded from a personal brand to a professional Practice. In this third iteration, she's wanting to revert back to a personal brand and expand her offerings.
With this discussion as a starting point, the development began with identifying what was working for Users, identifying new sets of Users and understanding how we should go about improving and expanding the experience with her new offerings.
As a budding designer, I designed the first iteration of Puja's website in 2019—a simple landing page experience displaying her service offerings and a way of contact.
The largest pain point of this initial iteration was that Users were unable to self-book appointments. In talks with Puja, having patients call for appointments was inefficient, both for her and her patients.
In my own critique of this initial iteration, I recognized that the lack of accessibility for actions like booking indirectly caused pain points.
Research
Puja offers psychotherapy services, and more broadly mental health counseling, to men, women, children, couples and families. Due to HIPPA compliance, I did not have access to more information on Puja's patients, so I relied on broader sources to understand these user segments.
Sourced from National Institute of Mental Health and the CDC
52.9m
adults in the U.S. suffer a mental illness
61m
children in the U.S. suffer a mental illness
30.6%
of adults with mental illness are age 18-25
Along with this data were also insights as to which user-segments(adults, children, men, women) actually took action with receiving treatment for their mental illness diagnosis. Overwhelmingly, women were found to be more likely to seek treatment for their diagnosis than any other segment. Puja, was able to confirm that a majority of her patients were women.
Ideation
Over several conversations about goals and what was lacking in the first iteration, Puja and I compiled a list of items Users should be able to get in using this experience.
In order of importance, we clearly identified the functions users should be able to do in this web experience:
Get in touch
Self-book and manage appointments
Learn about services and treatment
Learn about Puja's professional experience
Answers to questions
Access self-help material
Purchase products
Information Architecture
This IA was used to design the initial prototype of the new web experience. Minor revisions were made to this after implementation.
Lo-fi Wireframing
Hi-fi Wireframing
The hi-fi wireframe concepts helped me to flesh out ideas more and visualize how the experience will feel and function. After some early testing and subsequent revisions, the prototype was approved.
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The hamburger icon was initially tested as a way to open a newsletter subscribe form, but after testing, users didn't find it intuitive. This signifier suggested an affordance of menu access rather than a sign-up action. We ultimately implemented an auto pop-up.
Visual Design
Prototyping & Testing
In the final stages of testing, we found that users did not find the animation of on-page elements useful—many users found it to be distracting. We decided to ditch it.
In one of the prototypes, we tested animation of on-page elements. Upon scrolling, text elements, icons, buttons, images, etc. would slide into view. While this was a delight to users on a first-time basis, when navigating to other pages of the site, the novelty wore off quickly, and it quickly become an annoyance and distraction to users. We ultimately decided to remove it.
Reflection
Testing during this project was paramount to it's success. After establishing the first iteration of a prototype, I was able to glean many user-insights that I wouldn't have otherwise. Because of the HIPAA compliance constraint, there was a natural inhibitor in gaining deeper insights into Puja's patients—the user personas were partially assumption-based. In hindsight, had I more resources and accessibility, I would've liked to go a little deeper with my user-research as a lot of it was surface-level.
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