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Client

School project

Category

Time Management, Goal-directed design

My Role

Team leader

Duration

February to May, 2020 (2 months 21 days)

Executive Summary

This project is from an Interaction Design class I took during my junior year at Kennesaw State University. I was team leader and worked with two students to create a time management app. The app is based on the Pomodoro Technique by Francesco Cirillo. This technique emphasizes daily organization and focused work sessions paired with short breaks to improve productivity. 

Challenges

  • Improve student focus and productivity

  • Distinguish our app from competitors

  • Convert the paper-based Pomodoro Technique to a digital structure

  • Abruptly switch to online collaboration because of the Coronavirus pandemic 

The two gray buttons will open PDF files. The blue button will open our Figma prototype.

First, what is Price Transparency?

The Price Transparency Act requires American hospitals to create, update, and publicize a list of standard charges for services and items they provide. A public portal with this information must be intuitive and easily accessible.

After this legislation was introduced, SlicedHealth sought to build a patient portal based on the Price Transparency requirements. They hired me to design the UI from the ground up.

“An extra dose of transparency will bring more accountability and competition to the healthcare industry.”​

-Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. One of the bill’s co-sponsors

Benefits

  • Since every US hospital must post their prices online, patients can shop for the best value

  • Patients can get an estimate before agreeing to the treatment, procedure, or prescription

  • More people will decide to get medical care. According to a Harris Poll that was commissioned by Change Healthcare in July 2020, over half of consumers avoided care because they weren't sure what it would cost

Design Thinking

I used the Design Thinking framework throughout this project. It's a well established, iterative approach that encourages a human centered mindset when designing the product. 

Simple flowchart of the steps of Design Thinking

Goal Directed Design

Design thinking is great for high-level structure, but the specifics of each step are undefined. To supplement this framework, I used research methods from Goal Directed Design. Well-defined questions helped me establish context and business requirements. The steps are:

  • Kickoff meeting

  • Audit of existing software and competitor products

  • Stakeholder interviews

  • User interviews

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Due to the speed of this project and my other responsibilities, I was unable to use the entire Goal Directed Design process. To see that entire methodology in action, see my time management app project here.​

Kickoff Meeting & Stakeholder Interview

A kickoff meeting is necessary to build rapport and establish a shared vision for the project. For this job, it was especially important because of the complexity of healthcare. I was able to meet with stakeholders and subject matter experts to get a high-level overview of the product's purpose.
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My primary stakeholder is Chief Product Officer and co-founder Reese Walker. I reported updates to him throughout the design process. Reese is a subject matter expert on how to best support patient access, billing, and collection operations for a hospital. The second stakeholder was my dad, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Reed Liggin. Despite our family connection, he was rarely involved in the process.

This kickoff meeting and subsequent feedback sessions were all conducted virtually due to COVID-19 restrictions. I condensed the most significant findings below:

What is the product?

The product is an online interface that anyone can use to look up a medical item or service and see the estimated price for a variety of payment methods. 

Conclusion

This was one of my first professional projects while I was still in school. Despite my lack of experience at the time, I'm still proud of what I designed in such a short time. However, I also uncovered several blind spots in my skillset.

Lessons Learned

  • It's challenging to interpret design instructions from people not familiar with design principles

  • I struggle with information architecture and need to study it more on my own

  • Stakeholders (understandably) don't consider usability when setting business requirements

  • Healthcare is an incredibly complex field, but I love the challenge and want to have a career in that industry

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