Week Three & Four: User Research
The next component of our project was to conduct user research. It was important that we interviewed the stakeholders of our project, the people we were trying to serve, in order to adequately address the problems they face and observe how they currently work around those problems. We were given two weeks to identify who we would speak with and to arrange meetings, as well as figure out what methods we’d be using to get information.Â
The Process
We chose to implement surveys and interviews as the primary methods of research for our design project.
The main targets of our research were international students and medical personnel. We chose to survey international students due to the fact that they are likely to have a different healthcare provider in the United States than in their home countries. Initially, we perceived the process of filling out paperwork to be a significant burden for international students not only due to the language barrier, but also the fact that hospitals most likely wouldn’t have access to their full records. We suspected that some international students may have had their documents translated to English as part of the procedure of enrolling in universities in the United States. However, based off our survey responses, we discovered that most internationals only needed basic vaccination records on file, and that in most cases their full medical records are still in their country of origin. When they visited a hospital in the US, most said that the paperwork process was not very extensive and only took around 5-10 minutes. While language was a challenge for some, most did not consider it a significant drawback to their hospital visit experience. In fact, most thought that the waiting period for medical staff to process their information took the largest amount of time, ranging from 30 minutes to 2 hours.
Our team’s interviews were directed primarily to one of our direct stakeholders: practitioners in the medical field and managers in the healthcare industry. In pursuit of more detailed information from within these systems, we interviewed a number of different individuals including a pediatric trauma/acute burns/plastics nurse at Harborview Medical Center, a pharmacist, a manager at Hall Health here at UW, a nurse at Swedish Hospital and Ensign Dana Canaria, a patient care technician at the UW Medical Center, and a registered nurse in the Navy Nurse Corps. Across these professions there were a number of common threads. All agreed that the current information system in healthcare is, in practicality, functional, but could use some improvement.Â
Nurses spend almost equal amounts of time filling out paperwork and charting their experiences as they do working with patients. For information to be readily available, there must be planning in terms of paperwork, authorization to contact any previous health providers, and general health information ahead of time by the patient, otherwise their healthcare group must be contacted and the process must be, as the manager at Hall Health described, “babysat” or monitored, to ensure timely transfer of data. Likewise, the system can move only as fast as snail mail, faxing, or phone calls which can take days, weeks, or months.Â
A common desire expressed by our interviewees is a much faster transfer of information, where time spent gathering and authorizing the release of information could be directly administered towards treating a patient requiring immediate response. Information at the touch of a button, organized and authorized ahead of time, as well as a streamlined system for charting information, would go a long way to reduce the hours spent by healthcare providers in which they cannot help patients.
Moving ForwardÂ
By taking these perspectives into consideration, we can now look at our design project from numerous lenses. To better a patient’s experience in transferring health information, we must equally better the experience of those who manage that transfer. By understanding what goes into transferring medical information and who is involved, we will be able to adequately address the design flaws in the current systems these medical professionals face, and provide a new and feasible design solution.Â
Up Next
Now that we’ve conducted our user research, it is time to apply what we’ve learned. We will be wireframing in the coming weeks and creating the first low-fidelity prototype of our information system!Â
Week 5: Wireframing














