NYU Langone Design Research: Week 2

Diagram of Patient Feedback System, Vasu Kuram

This week, my group and I summarized our research and began the ideation process. Our goal was to each spend time developing a potential solution for the following problem statement: how might we create a neutral meeting point between patient and provider, while building a sense of community within the hospital network? After brainstorming separately, we met for a group critique so that we could move forward with one of the solutions.

I chose to continue developing the idea of a hospital wide campaign that would empower patients to speak up about their healthcare needs. I broke down the campaign into three main components: a patient feedback system, a speaker series, and a marketing plan.

The patient feedback system would serve as a way for patients to notify hospital administration of potential areas for growth. The first step I took was to survey NYU Langone’s current feedback system. The Patient Relations Team is only available by phone or in their office, Monday through Friday 9 AM to 5 PM.

There are three main issues with this:

1. Patients may not be comfortable complaining through the phone or face to face with a staff member
2. Long wait times may deter a patient from submitting feedback
3. It is not specific to the trans and non-binary community, so staff members may not know how to best respond to their needs

Thus, the solution I developed would include a digital interface and a collection box. It would also partner with NYU Langone’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Council to provide a specialized response for the trans and non-binary community.

Below are my initial sketches of the digital and analog user journeys, as well as the user interface for the feedback form.

The user journey for the collection box and analog touch point is illustrated below.

These forms would feed into an internal ticketing system where the patient relations team can respond to patient feedback. The following sketches are inspired by customer support interfaces like Zendesk.

An important feature of this internal system is that, if a feedback form references a specific provider, the ticket feeds into a provider database that displays all of the tickets related to that provider. This would allow hospital administration to aggregate feedback into useful metrics and track how well (or how poorly) hospital staff is doing in terms of respecting their patients’ gender identity and providing a consistent level of comfort.

Furthermore, Mingjing had the idea to create a metric dashboard based on the patient feedback system that provides anonymized data to the public, so that the community can track NYU Langone’s progress.

The second component of the campaign is a speaker series. The goal of this is to build a sense of community while also sharing educational resources with both providers and patients.

I created the following format for the speaker series:

• Occurs every 2 months (6 events per year)
• 3 practitioner facing events + 3 patient facing events
• Uses NYU faculty & community members as a resource
• Free & Open to the public (must register through eventbrite)
• Optional: accepts donations to mutual aid fund for trans & nonbinary medical care at NYU Langone

I also compiled sample event topics based on events that have taken place in the past.

Finally, the marketing plan serves two purposes: to create inclusive branding for the feedback system and the speaker series advertisements; and to put patients at ease and remind them that NYU Langone strives to be a safe space. I used Canva templates to create sample graphics.

In terms of what the marketing portion of this solution would look like in practicality, I suggested that we present our final product in the form of a pamphlet. The pamphlet would announce NYU Langone’s commitment to the gender expansive community with the inclusive branding we develop, introduce the new feedback system, and highlight the speaker series.

Thus, the steps to prototype this solution are as follows:

• Create high-fidelity prototype of digital and analog feedback system
• Research and write sample event concepts for 6 events
• Develop marketing kit based on NYU Langone brand identity (could include some social media posts and 2–3 graphics)
• Optional: Present all of this together in the form of a pamphlet

After putting together a brief summary of my ideas, I presented them to the group and we decided that this approach best suited our goals. We then spent time further developing each component of the campaign and delegating tasks. My goal for next week is to create an A/B testing format for our low-fidelity prototypes and to prototype the feedback form.