Overcoming Challenges In Digital Healthcare Experiences: Getting Started With User Research

When developing digital experiences in healthcare, it is very easy for teams to use their own experiences as a proxy for their user base. Everyone goes to a doctor at some point - so using personal experiences to inform product decisions is fine…right?

Using personal experiences to generate ideas and evaluate digital experiences can lead to risky assumptions. Those who work in healthcare tech day-in and day-out have an in-depth understanding of the health system, and often, a passion for the industry - the average person does not. When you work in healthcare, whether it be at the bedside, in an administrative role, or as part of a team making digital experiences, you develop expertise that most people do not have. When you work on digital healthcare experiences, you quickly shift from being a person who has experienced care as a patient to someone who lives and breathes healthcare jargon and the ins and outs of an incredibly complex system. 

If you work in digital healthcare experiences, the decisions you’ve made up to this point may or may not have been informed by user research - and it’s alright to use this as your starting point. There are a number of ways to introduce different methods of inquiry to iterate on existing experiences and start considering new ones at the same time.

How to Get Started with UX Research for Healthcare

We’ve put together a set of recommendations to help you take the next step in learning about the people who you want to use your health-focused digital experience.

Step 1: Identify Your Needs

First, you need to identify two things:

1. What do you know about your intended user base? What do you not know?
2. Where is your digital experience in its' development lifecycle (e.g., concept, design, development, launch)?

To tackle the first one, look at your current research findings (market research, user experience research, whatever you have) and the assumptions your team has made up to this point. With what level of confidence can you answer the following:

• How does your digital experience complement or compete with existing workflows?
• What problem does the experience solve and how important is that problem to the user?
• What motivates the user to engage with the experience?
• How does the experience address a specific user need?
• Do users have a high or low level of technical proficiency? What other digital experiences do they use?
• Why is it difficult for intended users to use the experience?

Step 2: Determine Possible Changes and Make a Plan

Next, determine what changes you can make based on your stage of development. Which of these describes your team the best?

The team is/has…

• Still in the brainstorming phase with room to pivot (Plan)
  • • This is a good time to understand the value of ideas, identify competitors, and use research to identify which idea is worth further investment. Data collected during this phase will help the team build a foundation for understanding user needs, build empathy, and start generating ideas grounded in research.
    • Potential methods we recommend at this phase: Exploratory in-depth interviews, ethnography, diary studies, Generative research, Literature reviews
• Planning development, but hasn’t started coding (Plan)
  • • This is the best time to iterate on preliminary designs and inform the direction you’ll take. Start testing ideas - from storyboards to wireframes to get reactions from users. 
    • Potential methods we recommend at this phase: Concept testing, Heuristic Review
• Started building, but has room to pivot a little bit (Optimize)
  • • At this stage, the team has already begun creating the digital experience. Think about what your team could iterate on or adjust by having conversations with development and design to determine timelines, urgency, and feasibility of changes. At this stage, consider testing prototypes that reflect iterations on ongoing work and high-impact workflows that are key to success.
    • Potential methods we recommend at this phase: Card Sorting, In-depth Interviews
• Already launched and is looking to optimize (Measure)
  • • Once a digital experience goes live, you have the opportunity to use the live site as stimuli to benchmark task performance, determine improvements, iterations, and new feature opportunities.
    • Potential methods we recommend at this phase: Qualitative Benchmarking, Quantitative Surveys

If you can’t make changes–either due to budget or tight timelines–that doesn’t mean research isn’t going to help you take next steps. This is an opportunity to get ahead and start planning and ideating for when the team can make changes based on insights from research.

Step 3: Increase Your Understanding

After gathering your current state of research and development, think about the outstanding questions you have that decrease your confidence in taking next steps and increase the likelihood of a poor product-market fit.

During each stage of the research lifecycle, there are a number of different questions you might want to answer about your various audiences and segments. Check out a few sample questions you might use as a starting point for building a research plan.

Idea stage - Discovery

• How do physicians use digital experiences to support their day-to-day patient care and what types of jobs to be done present the biggest opportunity for our digital experiences?
• What does a biologic coordinator’s workflow look like and where do digital experiences help or hinder their work?
• What are patient needs and pain points when searching for and choosing a new healthcare provider?

Refinement stage - Exploration

• What are some best practices for communicating important information to caregivers?
• What information or features could increase engagement and what are the most effective communication methods?
• Which prototype presents information to physicians in a way that enhances the value of the digital experience?

Post-launch - Testing & Optimization

• What is the baseline task performance on core tasks for HCPs?
• How satisfied are patients with the digital experience and where can it be improved?
• What percentage of users complete core workflows and where do they drop off?

It can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to research, especially if your team is newer to the idea. Taking the time to determine where you are in the research and development process and identify your team’s questions and hypotheses can be invaluable in building an effective user-centered roadmap that helps patients and healthcare professionals alike.