What if it weren't about if, but how?
The queer community has a long and complicated relationship with healthcare. While recent decades have seen strides toward more inclusive and affirming industry practices, challenges remain in ensuring equitable and compassionate care for all queer individuals.
This app is a first step in addressing some of the the unquantifiable issues in queer patient/provider relationships, and to help facilitate better care— allowing queer people to choose not just who will care for them, but how they’d like to be cared for.
This app is a first step in addressing some of the the unquantifiable issues in queer patient/provider relationships, and to help facilitate better care— allowing queer people to choose not just who will care for them, but how they’d like to be cared for.
Research
Beginning with the idea that this project would span both physical and mental healthcare, I set out to develop a deeper understanding of the queer experience of searching for healthcare. I wanted to learn just how involved providers are in the process of booking new patients, and what role identity and experience play in queer patients' decisions of which providers to see.
In order to better understand the needs and desires of queer patients and providers
in these intimate and vulnerable relationships, I began by talking to them directly.
5
Medical Professionals
8
Queer Patients
To fully grasp the complexities of norms and professional practice in different positions within healthcare, I interviewed doctors, nurse practitioners, and therapists in addition to queer patients of various identities and backgrounds.
Annotated transcripts of interviews with queer patients (zoomed out for privacy)
Mapping & coding important datapoints from each interview— identifying affinities and differences
Identity vs. clinical interest in Healthcare
What I found in the research complicated my initial plan — Every queer therapist I spoke to said that they were very open about their identity in both their web presence and in onboarding new clients. On the medical side, however, providers had much less control of their online personas, and were much less comfortable or certain about how or when it was appropriate to disclose that kind of personal information.
After mapping the data , I came away with four primary insights that guided my next steps.
Definition
Moving forward from this research, I used the insights and other context I gleaned from my primary research to define exactly who I was designing for, and what features would help them meet their goals.
I pinpointed two primary user groups:
1.
queer patients in need of urgent or specific care
2.
queer patients looking to develop a long term patient/provider relationship.
Understanding and defining the needs and goals of these two separate user groups (in this project they function more like use-cases) allowed me to clearly size the need an application like this might serve, and the goals it would be capable of addressing in each set of circumstances.
Ideation
Moving into ideation, My goal was to create a full-service platform for accessing and connecting queer healthcare, where patients could filter and search for providers, book visits, leave reviews, and get reminders of upcoming appointments.
Because the healthcare industry or the healthcare providers themselves were not quite ready for identity-based disclosures in their bios, I focused in on clinical interest, and simultaneously began to prototype other ways of allowing users to select providers based on the kinds of provider relationships they prefer.
preliminary user flow, from booking to reviewing, creating a 'word of mouth' feedback loop.
first draft of wireframe sketches
Prototyping & Testing
based on my initial research, the application's preliminary prototype allowed users to filter for providers based not only on type and clinical interest, but on the recommendations of users who've had appointments with the same providers before them; information about the more personal aspects of the provider rather than simple descriptions of the interaction or ratings.
In interviews, some people felt more comfortable with providers who joked around or had a sense of humor, while others preferred getting straight to the point.
In addition to clinical interest, this filter allowed users to make informed decisions about their providers, even when providers aren't willing to display identity-based information.
selected user journey from the wireframe prototype
Feedback
I tested this interface with all of the original patients I interviewed, along with 5 newbies. All of the users found the app mostly intuitive, but had a few issues navigating the colorless homepage without any hierarchy.
Users were primarily excited by the new filter and the possibility of being able more easily search for providers that specialized in queer healthcare, or were queer themselves. Despite their excitement, many wanted to make sure that 'vibe' filter was not a hard filter, but rather one that re-ordered providers based on the best match to their preferences,
"If it isn't possible or comfortable for providers to be forthcoming about their identities online, this way of filtering based on treatment style would be really helpful in understanding what the experience with different providers would be like, so I can decide what works best for me"
-queer patient
Branding & Design System
In order to develop the brand guidelines for this new interface, I dug back into my earliest research: How did patients want their experience to feel? I poured through the way that patients talked about their best healthcare experiences, and tried to emulate the energy, and ambience in the type, color, and interactions of the interface.
Delivery
for the final interface, I applied the branding system that I developed, and applied all of the feedback from testing, using color to help with the navigation of the homepage, and redesigning the filter to provide users with more agency over what they were shown.
Below are selected screens from the final application design.
