Case Study: Health Care 2022
Designing a User Friendly Search
Oncology Clinical Trial Data Base Search
An East Coast healthcare company specializing in cutting-edge oncology treatments needed a new clinical trials search solution. As case study volumes and web traffic grew, their current platform became hard to manage, impacting both users and admins. My team was brought in to identify user pain points, align with stakeholder needs, and design a scalable, user-friendly search experience. This case study details our approach to creating a streamlined, accessible solution for patients and researchers.
Process
Collaborating with the senior engineer, we crafted a scalable solution focused on user-centric design and UX/UI best practices.
Solution
Researched, designed, tested, and refined a simple, robust search solution for the Oncology Clinical Trials Database.
My Role
As the UX researcher, I led journey mapping, user interviews, and testing to shape a scalable, user-friendly search solution with a small cross-functional team.
Research Plan Overview
Research Artifacts Crafted Preview
Initial Research
A deep dive into company background, review website analytics, identify competitors, and current user experience.
1st Analytics Review - Google Analytics
2nd UX Audit - Taking inventory of UI and interactions
3rd Heuristic Evaluation - Evaluating product on N/N Group Usability Heuristics
4th Competitive Analysis - Seeking out working solutions within similar industries
5th Stakeholder Interviews - Understanding project goals, limitations, and expectations.
User Centric Approach
1:1 User Interviews
Oncology Patients = 92% of user base
Referring & Internal Physicians = 8% of user base
User Testing
Conducted moderated and unmoderated usability testing on the clinical trial red-route to understand user behavior, engagement, pain points, and motivations.
Testing Details
Testing Type = Moderated Usability Testing
Participants = 5 total ( 3 male, 2 Female )
Product Testing = SCC Live website (Oncology Clinical Trials)
Testing Tool = UserZoomGo
Recruiting = Client Provided Pool
Goal = In-depth look at the user journey, pain-points, motivations, and engagement with the Clinical Trials red-route.
Test Findings
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Users had extreme difficulty navigating the accordion menus with a 55% success rate.
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Interactions lead to dead-ends, 63% participants vocalized needing guidance or context.
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Users where looking for a search bar.
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Protocol #'s instead of titles caused confusion and misdirection.
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Very little value per-click, limited information is conveyed in general.
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No clear CTA or resources to continue the experience.
Priority 1 - Critical
Priority 2 - Major
Priority 3 - Minor
Priority 1 - Critical
Priority 2 - Major
Priority 2 - Major
Empathy Mapping
Empathy maps focused on user pains, motivations, and actions, revealing benefits of improved search, defining usage patterns, and guiding direction.
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Persona Building
Questions like "Who are our users?" "What do they care about?" and "What do they expect?" guided persona building and target market identification.
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Information Architecture
Current and Proposed IA (Sitemaps)
Navigation through the accordion folders was cumbersome and left users frustrated and empty-handed.
Proposed information architecture would remove the folders and allow a robust search bar to take over the hierarchy, simplifying engagement and access to the database of NHI Clinical Trials.
User Flows
The clinical trial user flow was mapped to visualize the journey, identify bottlenecks, and understand user movement through the experience.
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*User flows and sitemaps are often handed off to engineering to help develop red-routes.
Design in Discovery
Sketching
Sketches were used to quickly iterate and communicate with development on future UI implementation and limitations
Wireframes
Wireframing began to bring the designs to life and provided a basis for feedback, iteration, and development.
Search Bar
Search Suggestions
Search Results
Results Detail Page
Collaborating with Development
My annotated wireframes are provided to the development team to build context and simplify their workflow.
Continued Work and Hand-Off
After completing each project stage, I compiled findings into work packages for the next build phase. With stakeholders aligned and user expectations met, I transitioned to a support role as UI design and development ramped up.
