TL;DR

We aimed to offer healthcare professionals a way to gather patient information tailored to their needs and remove the burden on the clinical team. I led the end-to-end design process and supported the team in defining an MVP.

The context

At Accurx, we have a set of questionnaires that are highly used by GP practices. They collect patient information, which helps monitor and manage their conditions. However, since every practice works differently, many of them wanted to customise the questionnaires to meet their needs.

But creating a questionnaire is time-consuming because it involves many clinical requirements. The clinical team would need to spend a lot of time doing manual verifications and checks. Not only did it create overwhelming stress for the clinical team but the slow process also frustrated the practices.

The goal

Provide a way for GP practices to create their questionnaire to gather patient information for their medical needs.

Our high-level goals were to:

Allow users to create practice-specific questionnaires
The custom questionnaires need to work for the supported medical systems

The impact

In September 2022, we started rolling this feature out to users. By February 2023, there were:

"I can't even tell you how many things will be useful for!"

"Even in this iteration, another game-changing moment"

My role

Led the design of the first MVP between July 2022 and September 2022.
Another designer was involved in the initial planning and scoping before I joined the team.
The team consisted of a Product Manager, a Tech Lead, a Researcher, 4 Product Engineers.

The challenge

Creating a questionnaire involves some specific clinical requirements, such as including the correct code (SNOMED) with the answers to ensure they can be recorded in medical systems. Since the users had no prior experience in building medical questionnaires with these codes, it was tricky for us to know if they could use them correctly.

So, we decided to build a version that allows users to create questionnaires for simple responses. This version would help us observe user behaviours and answer the following questions:

How do users incorporate SNOMED codes into their questionnaires?
Which SNOMED codes do they require?

The process

Scoping the MVP

Initially, another designer was involved in the MVP planning and scoping. Upon taking over the design, I noticed uncertainty and a tendency to overload the MVP scope with many functionalities. So I quickly initiated discussions with the Product Manager, Researcher, and Tech Lead to clarify:

the goal of the MVP
timelines for design, research and implementation
the engineer's capacity

I also mapped out a flow to illustrate how the MVP should work which helped create clearer conversations.

Once we agreed on the scope, I posted a Slack message to inform other team members and ensure they had a chance to ask questions and raise concerns.

Constant communication with the team

Since I joined late in the planning stage, I made sure to regularly talk with the team to stay updated on decisions regarding both the technical and product aspects.

I organised design walkthrough sessions to update the team on progress, share design choices and discuss technical details. The aim was to enhance understanding, encourage questions, address technical constraints and make collaborative decisions.

I also like to put some explanations of the flows and the rationales in my design files so that people can easily follow along with the design and leave comments in their spare time.

Testing the designs

Once the design was created and agreed upon with the team, I worked with Sam, a researcher, on planning and conducting the usability testing. In this round of testing, we aimed to learn about:

the assumptions for the codes
if the participants understand the limitations that we had in this MVP and their thoughts
the overall experience

The design was tested with 5 participants who had expressed interest in custom questionnaires. Overall, most completed the task successfully. They also understood the limitations of this MVP and used the code correctly.

Implementations

Because I shared the designs frequently during the process, the engineers already had a clear idea of the design before I handed it over to them. They would also comment on the design file whenever they had questions or concerns.

I also encouraged frequent progress updates from engineers for timely problem-solving and quality assurance (QA). This practice not only boosts team morale but also generates excitement as the product takes shape from their ideas.

Takeaways

This work was pretty challenging. I felt pressure to learn about all the context and the features with very limited time and capacity, since there was a tight deadline to meet and also I was working across different teams.

But I’m really happy with how it turned out. Collaboration and communication are definitely the key elements to have a smooth design process. This is also something I always focus on in the design process to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Enter password