project 01/ myDental Chart

myDental Chart

I leveraged my dental background to craft a mobile scheduling experience for patients at my community dental clinic. Through meticulous research and thoughtful design, I created an app that redefines how patients interact with their dental appointments.

Role: Researcher, Content creator, UX/UI Designer

Timeline: December 2022-July 2023

Design process

Problem

Discover

Define

Design

Deliver

Test

Problem

In my role as a community dentist, I not only oversee a dental team and perform procedures, but also consider barriers to healthcare for underserved and underprivileged patients. In large healthcare settings, patients are lost when they forget to schedule and/or don't show for their following appointments. As a result, many patients see the dentist when they get a toothache, which is often too late. Knowing how underutilized technology is in our workflow, I began to contemplate the potential for a more effective means of fostering patient engagement with their oral well-being.

Objective: To create a product that connects patients with their dental office and helps achieve their dental goals

Discover

Drawing from my background as a dentist, I instinctively approached the project with a business-oriented mindset informed by years of navigating pain points within community dental practice.

To empathize with the challenges faced by different members of our team, I started with a qualitative survey of my staff/patients as 10 potential users, and mapped the service blueprint of our current workflow

Receptionist- "The schedule fills up fast but falls apart easily when the day gets close, then we have to call off the waitlist and not everyone answers"

Dental Assistant- "It’s sad to see patients come in with similar problems because they aren’t cleaning their teeth, I want to see them take charge of their oral health."

Dentist- "We don’t always have time to go over the details of all

treatment options."

Patient- “I want a dental clinic that understands my busy schedule. Flexible appointments and educational resources would make a huge difference for me."

Service Blueprint

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Provide additional space to connect with clinic, increase ease of access
Increase physical accessibility with directions and image of clinic
Increase trust and familiarity with provider profiles
Create content/information that is reliable and accessible when providers are not available to answer questions, create motivation for patients to improve oral health at home
Provide answers to Insurance FAQs, give patient access to schedule from home
Give patients mobile access to treatment plans and transparent prices, give patient access to schedule from home

Define

After gaining insight from surveys and the service blueprint, I defined and constructed a user persona, Sarah, to represent patients who would use mobile devices in their day to day lives. I then deepened my empathy for this user's pain points through journey mapping.

Next, I narrowed down and defined 3 key problems and 3 key opportunities to address my user's interactions with their oral health and established a new problem statement to guide my designs.

Problem areas

Users find it challenging to schedule and reschedule appointments
Users desire more information about their treatment plans and practical instructions on how to improve their oral health
Users, especially those with dental anxiety, want more information about their providers

Opportunities

Create a mobile application with the ability to schedule and reschedule appointments
Provide more accessible information on procedures and oral health so patients don't have to seek third party resources
Improve trust in clinic and providers with provider profiles

How might we...

How might we increase trust and accessibility to our dental clinic and decrease patient no show rates, thereby streamlining patient experience over a series of appointments

Guiding principles: simple, efficient, educational, motivational

Design

Low Fidelity Wireframes

Mid Fidelity Wireframes

Testing

I conducted two usability tests to observe user interactions with the app and understanding of its features, specifically the motivational content, homepage confirmation button, and the treatment planning page. This feedback helped identify pain points and assess the quality and simplicity of the design.

Test 1

My first usability test was conducted with a mid-fidelity wireframe, testing with 3 patients at my dental clinic that fit the demographic of our user.

Summary of findings

What works:

Participants liked personal, informative, motivational content
Participants liked multiple ways to access treatment plan
Participants liked the idea of treatment information prior to scheduling
Participants generally had a positive reaction to the app

Areas for improvement:

Reduce visual real estate of gamification area so users can find upcoming appointments and confirmation buttons faster
Larger CTA button on the home page
Label available to confirm and unavailable appointments to confirm to remove on-page instruction
Remove odontogram (visual representation of teeth) image box and on page instruction to reduce confusion
Rethink how treatment plan is delivered/information architecture
Add more photos/visual interest

For upcoming appointments, I mocked up a few different ways users could confirm, reschedule, and cancel their appointments and decided to test a single confirmation button to improve the CTA. I also labeled upcoming appointments for those ready to be confirmed and future appointments for those not ready for confirmation to remove written instruction. Lastly, I added more information about the provider and location on the home page to strengthen trust in the clinic/provider/patient relationship.

Design considerations

I explored reducing visual real estate so the user can view upcoming appointments without scrolling. I also removed the quantification of user progress in response to confusion feedback

Visual Identity

Using my community clinic's colors, I created a style guide with a sans serif easy-to-read font.

High Fidelity Wireframes

Test 2

After applying the visual identity and design changes from test 1, I conducted a second usability test with 5 patients at my dental clinic that fit the demographic of our user to confirm that the changes made were effective.

Summary of findings

What works:

Participants like less space usage of motivational content, they found upcoming treatments faster
Participants like information and provider photos on home page
Participants like large CTA buttons
Preference for new questionnaire UI format

Areas for improvement:

Reintroduce qualitative measurement for motivational content
Create “All” filter on treatment plan to see the entire plan
Label available, unavailable, and completed on treatment plan to break up the page and require less reading for understanding of the treatment plan
Increasing clickable space for three dot buttons

Design considerations

I maintained the reduced visual noise and real estate so the user can view upcoming appointments without scrolling and reintroduced a visual representation of progress for treatment, oral habits, and diet for more motivation

Created headers for available, unavailable, and completed treatments for clarity of the treatment plan

Updated UI of oral health and diet questionnaires based on user preference

Summary of Design Considerations

1

Motivational content

Reduced visual noise and real estate so the user can view upcoming appointments without scrolling
Removed quantification of user progress with oral health in response to confusion feedback
Maintains visual representation of progress for treatment, oral habits, and diet

Before

After

2

Confirmation button

Improved CTA with additional actions available on new pages
Created upcoming appointment labels for appointments that are ready to be confirmed and removed written instruction
Added more information about the provider and location on the home page

Before

After

3

Treatment Plan

Removed the image box because of unfamiliarity with an odontogram
Changed the horizontal menu to a filter menu
Created headers for available, unavailable, and completed treatments
Added accessible "schedule" buttons

Before

After

Deliver

Results

This was a challenging and valuable project to utilize product design in a field that I am very familiar with. I was fortunate to have mentorship and guidance for this project, as well as access to real patients for research and product testing. A challenge I experienced was a lack of visual content and animation for dental products, I had to develop UI and visual appeal from scratch. Ultimately, I successfully designed an app for users to interact with their dental appointments while learning about their oral health.

While there are still more opportunities to design (see below), next steps would involve connecting with a software developer to launch this product and partner with insurance companies to transfer API of patient insurance plans to address another key pain point for users.