UX Case Study — Website Redesign of Dr. Kathleen Mahannah
Allowing voices to be heard, through a one-on-one natural healthcare journey that aims to get at the root of the problem through integrated medical practices.
WHEN OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS
We were introduced to the project of creating a responsive web design for Dr. Kathleen Mahannah (Dr. Kat), a newly accredited naturopathic doctor (ND) practicing out of Restoration Health Clinic. In addition, we were also asked to help rebrand Dr. Kat with what reflects her personality and to showcase her unique approach and knowledge regarding naturopathy. By doing so, we hoped to help her gain more patient bookings, email subscribers and create what users would feel to be a personal, one-on-one healthcare journey.
THERE’S NO “I” IN “TEAM”
UI: Vivian Lin
UX: Ali Saai | Maheen Kamani | Crystal Chow
This time around, I was lucky to be working alongside 2 other UX designers as well as 1 UI designer, and we were tasked to create a responsive design within a 3 week timeframe. Although having both UX and UI designers onboard, we still had to dabble into each others playing field to help ease the workload. The dynamics of this team was unbelievable and we had no issues getting down and dirty hitting the floor running.
THE PROBLEM
Although naturopathy has been around since the 19th Century, it is still a relatively untouched subject for many. First thoughts that come to people’s mind when they think of naturopathy includes the stereotypes of it being a preventive practice focused on healthy eating or for the lack of words, it to be a method of complete nonsense. Naturopathic physicians in the past have taken it upon themselves to put together their own personal sites and to provide the internet community with explanations of what naturopathy actually is.
Likewise, Dr. Kat, being new to the community, faced similar issues of reaching out to the general public and ultimately her target audience.
Her focus was mainly on:
- women between the ages of 25–50
- women health concerns
- individuals frustrated with their current General Practitioners or public health system
THE OPPORTUNITY
With the naturopathic practicing community being as large as it is, most NDs’ websites looked and felt the same on many aspects. They want to share what naturopathy is all about, and because of this, majority of their sites consisted of info-packed long scrolling pages. All practicing individuals also ran an online booking option that would be carried through a third party, and the fact that sometimes shock users, were that they had to be taken to an external site to complete the booking, and for some, would result in them leaving the site completely. Specifically speaking for Dr. Kat’s scenario, her clinic carried this service through Medeo, a virtual healthcare interaction between providers and patients, which would then lead the user to a list of all available ND’s practicing at her clinic. Let’s just say, once you’ve read through all of Dr. Kat’s content and made a decision to finally make a booking with her, navigation could be a little less confusing.
As seen below, Dr. Kat’s current website showcases similar faults of the industry.
BUSINESS GOALS
To share her approach — integrated medicine
Provide more knowledge regarding naturopathy to general public.
To gain more bookings and email subscribers
With these business goals in mind, we set out to research whether, those goals aligned with what users needed.
RESEARCH
We incorporated various types of research methods into this project including that of surveys, interviews, domain research, competitive and comparative analysis, as well as affinity diagraming.
For interviews, Dr. Kat had kindly given us a list of patients who we could talk to for insight on their experiences with medical attention as well as their history of how or what they knew about naturopathy. On top of that, we extended invitations to chat with users on various Naturopathic groups on social media as well as reaching out to friends and family.
We also sent out an online survey to remaining participants who we couldn’t meet in person or phone interview. The findings that we gathered from these surveys and interviews, we put into an affinity diagram — an amalgamation of key points — to better visualize the findings. Through this we were able to identify:
- users’ pain points and frustrations
- what concerns they have
- what was of most value to them
Some of the main findings from the list above included focusing on the pros and cons of naturopathy, motivations to see a naturopath, and frustrations they have with their current form of medical care. One of these findings took us on a deeper dive into the pros and cons of naturopathy and the facts and myths that we should tackle with our redesign of the website.
Pros of Naturopathy:
- Time spent — Users were pleasantly surprised as to how much time a ND spends with their patient
- Tackle the root of the problem — instead of giving users the usual “it’s part of the process, just wait it out” answer to their health questions, users are surprised that a ND digs deeper to find the reason that’s causing them discomfort
Cons of Naturopathy:
- Cost — the cost associated with seeing a ND is remarkably more than the usual health care options
- Location — ND clinics are scattered over town, but majority of them won’t be as convenient as your family doctor’s
TESTING
As a team, we were really efficient in getting a lot of tests done throughout the three weeks. Majority of them being in the paper prototype phases which gave us a lot of insight as to what worked and what needed revamping. As seen above in the image, we managed to get in some testing with the high fidelity screens as it proved immensely useful for any feedback regarding user behaviour. From conducting these user tests, we were then able to go through some iterations before finalizing the product.
ITERATIONS
While testing, we realized we had made assumptions on certain areas of the design. Some of those assumptions included that users would read the entire text blurb before scrolling through the page. That being said, when we asked for users to find out more about the attending physician, they would automatically jump to the navigation bar at the top instead of staying to read the “About Me” section on the home page. Other iterations that we had made included progressive disclosure of information. For example, if the user was the least interested in learning about the benefits of naturopathy are, they would not have to scroll through a long page of detailed information that would be then, irrelevant to them. Instead, incorporating progressive disclosure menus have made our pages easier to navigate across and at the same time, require less scrolling.
SUMMARY
Overall, this was a great experience. Not only was my team and I able to educate our client about the importance of UX on her website, but she has taken it upon herself to make changes right away. For example, the colour palette has been changed to match the one we had proposed. Links to booking an appointment with her have been changed into the streamlined process as seen in our prototypes too.
*UPDATE* this project is currently being developed as we speak. Don’t forget to check back here to see the final product full in flesh.
FUTURE RECOMMENDATION
- To incorporate videos to help reduce the long scrolling pages
- Include sections mentioning expectations of first visits, testimonials and reviews
- Introduce a patient portal
- Include information for fees
- Explore into Google Analytics — increasing SEOs, allowing her site to have a higher search ranking
Prototype
Desktop Link: InVision
Mobile Link: InVision
