NYU Langone Design Research -week 4 progress: User Interviews & Prototype Testing

Team members: Blessing, Ruobing, and Yixun

User Interviews

We started this project with generative research, decided that we were going to work on NYU Langone’s Transgender Health website redesign, and moved on to creating mid-fidelity prototypes last week. This week, we tested our prototype and conducted user interviews to get insights from actual target users and feedback on our prototype.

Blessing had people in her connections that are in our target user segment, so she handled all the recruiting and scheduling processes. Other members and I tried contacting several trans organizations in NYU but got no response, so it was very helpful that Blessing was able to find people from who we wanted to get direct insights.

We met up on Sunday to discuss the interview guide, process, and assigned who is going to take which part because we did a group interview on zoom. We were initially planning to have a group interview session with four of us and four participants in the same room, but two of them ended up not showing up. Participants not showing up was nothing out of the ordinary when I worked as a user researcher, but this group interview with two participants and four of us asking questions/observing/taking notes went really well. We divided our interview into two sections: general questions to understand their experience when seeking/receiving medical care, and prototype testing to get feedback on the current prototype we had.

Rough Interview guide:

User Testing Plans 
* Intro [under 10 minutes]
Explain what’s happening? 
NYU Langone problem statement, what we’ve been doing in class, why we need their help ---Ruobing
Introduction round: everyone’s name and  pronouns
Note: they can skip any questions you don’t feel comfortable answering, point out if we make a mistake, please let us know, they can feel comfortable to share more we asked, if we’ve skipped something
Confidentiality and ask if we can record
* Ask [25 minutes] ---Blessing, Yixun
What are your current experiences with healthcare
How do you seek/search medical services
What are factors you look for 
What are current problems you face?
How important is mental/psychological care/resources and do you feel like you have access to that currently
* Explain our prototype and ask questions [25 minutes]
Introduce the existing pages for [5 minutes]
Homepage [7 minutes] --Blessing
Doctors Page [7 minutes] --Erika
Our Care Team//Video [7 minutes] --Ruobing
Resources [7 minutes] --Yixun
* Overall feedback and wrap up[8 minutes] ---Erika
Ask them if the features we are implementing are helpful
Ask what other features we could implement 
What could be improved from what we have
Anything to add
Mention confidentiality again
Thank the participant

I cannot share the interview guide and notes but this is what the first page looks like:

We met 1 hour before the interview to finalize questions and go over the process and spent 1 hour with the two participants to ask questions, and we debriefed for about 30 minutes after that.

The participants were both really friendly and were willing to answer any questions we had. We were nervous about asking questions about their personal experiences but they seemed really comfortable throughout the interview session and they shared that they really enjoyed the style of this interview. We tried to make the session feel comfortable by making it a conversation style instead of simply reading out the questions from the script. They also shared that having other participants in the interview helped them feel more comfortable to share information and give feedback and that it would have been harder if there was only one participant. The participants really opened up about their personal experience when receiving medical care as transgender or gender non-conforming patients, so I emphasized confidentiality again at the end of the interview.

Some quotes from the user interview that helped us define problems:

How they seek/find a medical provider:

• I was referred to a good doctor with experience treating trans patients by my therapist.
• I always check doctors’ reviews online. It’s important to know experiences other trans patients had.
• My mom is a nurse practitioner. Mom told me all the regulations and rights I needed to know. Otherwise, I would have no idea about my rights.

Ideal doctor:

• I want someone who would understand me.
• No one was advocating for me so I had to stand up for myself.
• Some doctors are unfamiliar with trans patients. I’m NOT here to answer their questions, I’m here to get answers about my own body.
• Black trans woman would be my ideal doctor. They would make sure I’m taken care of. A lot of the times people don’t understand what we go through.

Problems they encounter:

• The world is already set up against us so we need all the help we can get.
• When I went to get the blood work done, the nurse asked me if I’m getting the gender-affirming surgery. She was acting weird about it.
• My partner has to deal with issues with psychiatric offices but doctors there did not listen to them or don’t really know about the issues they encounter.
• Having access to any medical psychological care is very important, my therapist helped me a lot when I first came out.
• If our mental health was taken better care of, our physical health wouldn’t be as bad.

Personal Learning Outcome

I have conducted multiple 1on1 or 2on1 in-depth user interview sessions before but this was the first time moderating an interview with more than one participant. It went really well in this case because the group setting helped the participants feel more comfortable to share their personal experiences, instead of it being a formal interview. Also during the interviews, I asked several questions off the script to learn deeper about the experiences they shared, but I accidentally asked a few yes/no questions, which is not a good way to ask questions during in-depth interviews. I realized that after asking them and fixed that afterward but I need to be more aware of the way I’m asking questions next time. Overall, the interview went well and we got really helpful insights and feedback.