Patient-centered portal
Role: UX and UI designer
Patient portal for people with MS
Client
MS (Multiple Sclerosis) Research Australia, is the largest Australian not-for-profit organisation dedicated to funding, coordinating, educating and advocating for MS research as part of the worldwide effort to solve MS.
What is Multiple Sclerosis?
Multiple Sclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the central nervous system that requires a complex, differential, and lifelong treatment strategy, which involves high monitoring efforts and the accumulation of numerous medical data.
Problem statement
People with MS find it difficult to manage their health records, often relying on manual methods.
While they are willing to participate in research by sharing their data, not seeing the impact of their contributions might reduce their motivation to share data.
This could significantly affect research progress, as their data is vital for advancing research and improving the lives of everyone affected by MS.
The project goal
To improve treatment and one day find a cure for MS, the not-for-profit MS Research Australia aimed to develop an all-in-one health care management tool for people with MS.
The main goals of the 'inforMS' management tool, are to help users easily and quickly, this includes:
see and interact with their health data
share their health data with their care team
participate in MS research and find clinical trials.
My role
As the sole product designer for the project, I led the UX strategy, from planning discovery workshops to creating a prototype and user testing.
Additionally, I assisted in managing a large group of stakeholders from the MS community and attended their regular community MS meetings.
Quick overview
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Stakeholder workshops
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Focus group discovery workshops
(e.g. doctor, neurologist, nurse, people with MS) -
Secondary research
Discover
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Persona
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Behaviour map
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User flows
Define
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Wireframe (low fi)
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New branding
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Hi-fi mocks
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Further research
Develop
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Prototypes (hi-fi)
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Pivot - feature user testing
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User testing report and recommendation
Deliver
Design process
This project is currently on hold. No designs are available for public viewing at this time.
What makes this project special?
Challenge
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Timeline: designing multiple custom features to help users better manage their disease, within a very short timeframe.
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Cost: high development costs due to the complexity of the features and extensive design efforts.
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Risk: features were based on assumptions on user needs.
My approach - 'not the traditional user testing'
Instead of traditional user testing methods to observe user interactions, we proposed to take a step back and did a 'feature user testing' feedback session.
We prioritised features for testing and created high fidelity mock ups of each feature to gather user feedback.
We included questions like:
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"Do you see yourself using this feature?"
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"How often would you use this feature?"
The outcome
💡 Interestingly, some testers said they would use certain features but only once a month.
💡 By asking the right questions, this valuable insight helped the client decide whether to proceed with specific features.
⭐ With this approach, we saved the client significant money and reduced risk in an early stage.
saw themselves using the
InforMS app regularly to manage the disease.
80%
considered buying a wearable (e.g. Fitbit)
after seeing the 'My Goals' feature.
50%
User testing key insights
My takeaway
I've been passionate about this project since the start because I believe health technology can truly impact people's well-being.
Key learning
This project has involved lots of people with different backgrounds, most of the people are not familiar with UX.
I have learnt how to work with a big group of stakeholders, how to bring everyone to the design journey, being able to communicate to each other and showing the value of UX.
The impact
I remember one of the elderly users said, "you have no idea how much I appreciate this app. Thank you for all your hard work. Please make this app happen fast."
I almost had tears in my eyes (actually I did).
This is one of the most challenging projects I have ever worked on, yet the most rewarding.