NurseLine a Responsive Website Proposal
My Role: UX Designer | Duration: 2 Weeks | Project Status: Ongoing
Project Overview
For many nurses, the experience of working at the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a career-defining experience. As hospitals faced unprecedented challenges, nurses pressed on in a high-risk environment.
Scope of Work
In an effort to better understand the problems nurses face as they navigate their personal and professional lives in the still-unfolding pandemic, we conducted a series of research activities to gather more information. This research helped guide our design of a responsive website specifically created for nurses who worked at the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Process
In the “discover” part of our project - during which we set out to better understand our problem by gathering user research - we prepared and conducted the following:
- Screener survey for interviews
- User Interviews
- Affinity Mapping
- Persona
- Journey Map
- Revised Research Statement
Once we had defined a more pointed research problem, we were able to enter into the the design phase of our project which consisted of the following:
- Feature prioritization
- MoSCoW map
- Design studio
- Mid-fidelity wireframes
- Usability testing
Problem Space Statement
Hypothesis:
Nurses at the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic face a higher likelihood of contracting the disease, which is impacting their personal and professional lives.
Assumptions:
- Nurses are facing social isolation and the need to quarantine if they become infected
- Nurses face the possibility of being out of work for long periods if they get sick.
- Nurses are worried about their family’s health.
Problem Statement:
“How might provide nurses at the frontlines of the pandemic with resources to alleviate the stresses they face in their work?”
RESEARCH PHASE (Discover + Define)
Goal of Research
In an effort to better understand the problems nurses face as they navigate their personal and professional lives in the still-unfolding pandemic, we conducted a series of research activities to gather more information. Our objectives were to:
- Understand how nurses experience work during the COVID pandemic.
- Identify the main pain points they experience.
- Identify what resources they have access to and what is lacking.
Research
We began our research by sending out a survey on google forms to narrow down our interview pool. From that we decided to would be interviewing registered nurses who worked during throughout the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using an interview guide we conducted 5 interviews remotely over zoom.
Synthesis » Affinity Mapping
Once our interviews were completed, we synthesized the findings of the research through affinity mapping. For this exercise we recorded observations from our interviews on individual notes on a Miro board. Our observations were as follows.
- I don’t always feel supported by my hospital, but I feel camaraderie with my co-workers.
- I know how to wind out at the end of a stressful day and take care of my mental health.
- I found the experience of working during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic stressful day and take care of my mental health.
- I usually have to think on my feet at work, and I’ve had to be especially adaptive and innovative when resources have been scarce at work.
- I find that I have to adopt to a “new normal” in my work because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Persona
Synthesizing our research led to our persona Toph, a fictional person that served as a representation of our users.
Toph’s perspective gave us a framework of our users behaviors, goals, pain points and needs we could better understand our users as we worked to solve their problems. We made sure to reference Toph as we continued on to the creating a journey map of the users and began sketching the design.
Journey Map
A journey map helped us to visualize Toph’s typical work days following the height of the COVID pandemic. We were able to identify the highs and lows of Toph’s days, which also helps us to better understand opportunities for our responsive website design.
Revised Problem Statement
INSIGHT: Nurses are still dealing with the stress of working through the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
PERSONA: Registered nurses who worked throughout the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
PROBLEM: Nurses are worried about the professional consequences of sharing too much on social media.
GOAL: To provide nurses with mental health resources and support to better navigate new work environments and alleviate the stress from working during the COVID-19 pandemic.
RESEARCH » DESIGN
Nurses are still dealing with the stress of working through the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and often rely on other nurses for support » A social media site for nurses to connect with other nurses, share stories, information and access resources.
Nurses work long shifts taking very short breaks throughout the day which they often use for a quick recharge» Provide nurses with short guided mediations and soothing sounds for which they can incorporate into their short breaks.
Nurses are worried about the professional consequences of sharing too much on social media » Allow for anonymous posts and robust privacy settings to ensure nurses have a safe space for sharing their stories.
DESIGN PHASE (Design + Deliver)
NurseLine
A social media site for registered nurses where they have options to post anonymously and have access to quick guided mediations.
Design Studio: Sketching + Concept
As a technique for ideation, the design studio allowed us to quickly sketch, pitch, critique, and iterate designs.
From our final sketches were able to converge a number of key features for the mid-fidelity prototype: a bottom row of icons for the main features, a content page of scrolling posts, and a hamburger menu in the top left for additional content.
Mid-fidelity Screens (Wireframes — describe evolution of concept)
We decided to name the website “NurseLine” — indicating both its target audience and the “hotline” aspect of its social media content sharing.
Design Iterations: First Round
Below are the screen flow’s of the tasks we would asking our test participants to complete. The icons/buttons that need to be selected in order to complete the tasks are highlighted in green.
By creating a screen flow for each task we were able to confirmed that our mid-fi prototype was ready to be tested. The tasks were as follows.
- Turn off location services.
- Create a post
- Select a soothing sound.
Initial User Testing: First Round
The testing centered on three tasks that our persona, Toph would most likely set out to accomplish in the website:
- Go into your account and make sure that the website does not know your current whereabouts.
- Post a quick question to the main page without using your profile name.
- Take a minute to yourself and put on a some calm background noise.
Testing took place remotely over Zoom with 5 participants. The results of our first round of testing were as follows.
- 80%, 4/5 users successfully navigated Task 1 within the NurseLine website, with an average completion time of .35 seconds.
- 80%, 5/5 users successfully navigated Task 2 within the NurseLine website, with an average completion time of .27 seconds.
- 90%, 5/5 users successfully navigated Task 3 within the NurseLine website, with an average completion time of .19 seconds.
- We had One failure where the participant went to account sign out instead of updating privacy settings.
- Indirect paths in the second participant’s tests were caused by uncertainty over how to share a post, and clicking in and out of “Meditation”
High-fidelity Screens (Annotations/Screen Flow)
Taking our results from round 1 user testing in consideration we implemented the following changes into our high-fidelity screens.
- From the homepage, we updated Logo.
2. We retained the pencil icon, but moved it into the main page, along with the option to share a photo or a video.
3. Within individual profiles, users are able to fill in personal information and change privacy settings. The option to delete or deactivate the account is found under “privacy & settings”. We also added an “always keep me anonymous” option to the “privacy & settings” page.
Final User Testing
Testing took place remotely over Zoom with 5 participants using the exact same script as the first round of testing. Results from round 2 of user testing were as follows.
- 40% of users also took an indirect path by attempting to delete the address information in the profile page instead of just turning off location services.
- Users had trouble navigating to privacy and settings under the account profile, 60% of those tested immediately clicked on the “Always keep me anonymous” option.
- 80% users went back into the privacy & settings page to turn on the “always keep me anonymous” option, before going back to the main page to post.
- The two failures of this test were due to users who navigated to “guided meditation” rather than “soothing sounds,” however all users were able to directly navigate to the meditation page from the homepage and main menu.
Recommendations + Implementation + Next Steps
Our high-fidelity of testing results fell dramatically in comparison tp the mid-fidelity testing. The minor change we made by adding the “always keep me anonymous” option to the “privacy & settings” page proved to leave users confused on how to complete the tasks. We recommend moving forward that we improve clarity on the privacy settings. One way to do this would be to combine anonymity and location services under a single heading, so that users can more easily see the relation between the two. Continue user testing on this. We would also like to edit the usability test, possibly reordering the tasks, to determine if this was a problem of testing or if the feature itself is not useful, and the option to go anonymous should only be accessible under settings.
Once those changes are implemented we will be able to conduct another round of user testing.
