HEALTHCARE PROGRESSIVE WEB APP
A user-friendly healthcare app helping companies safely return employees to work during COVID-19
Project Role
UX Writer, UX Designer
Company
Clearspace
Challenge
Clearspace is a healthcare startup focused on helping location-dependent small businesses (25-100 FTEs) safely return their employees to work amid the COVID pandemic.
A number of apps were already on the market. However, they were designed for larger businesses with significant resources dedicated to managing the COVID situation. They were highly robust solutions with a complex feature set. Many small businesses, already financially-compromised due to the pandemic, simply don’t have the human resources for managing the more complex systems.
Clearspace’s mission was to address a gap in the market for a solution targeted to the smaller business market. A simple interface for both employee users and administrative managers.
Solution
The project was to develop an MVP app to help small businesses manage their staff’s COVID-19 status. Branded Clearspace, the primary goal being helping company managers make critical staffing decisions and managing the requisite communications.
Per the MVP concept, a sizable backlog of potential capabilities were gathered, for continual refinement based on ongoing research results.
Given the small business target, a simple user interface was mandatory. The user needed to navigate through the site as intuitively as possible.
Outcomes
Data points are customizable per client, so each prospect will provide additional input regarding market interests and needs. In addition to the ongoing attitudinal research, the early-stage MPV product will generate behavioral site analytics to be analyzed. Findings will be applied towards new feature developments.
Process
EMPATHIZE
Information gathering and getting to know the target audience
Competitive Analysis
The feature sets on the Spider chart were determined with behavioral groupings of the user goals for the primary target audience segment. While the top competitor apps are offering highly robust solutions, the administrative costs are more than what many small businesses can afford. The opportunity for Clearspace is having an app that provides the easiest to read data visualizations and checks off the feature requirement boxes with a simple interface anyone can figure out and use.
DEFINE
Making sense of the findings gathered in the Empathize phase
User Flows
The feature sets on the Spider chart were determined with behavioral groupings of the user goals for the primary target audience segment. While the top competitor apps are offering highly robust solutions, the administrative costs are more than what many small businesses can afford. The opportunity for Clearspace is having an app that provides the easiest to read data visualizations and checks off the feature requirement boxes with a simple interface anyone can figure out and use.
IDEATE
Generating ideas for potential solutions
Site Map
With fewer resources to allocate to specific issues, simpler user interfaces are often more suitable for the small business market. A good start for achieving a simple interface is by keeping navigation options to a minimum. It helps focus the user and reduces mistaken clicks.
PROTOTYPE
Experimentation and turning ideas into tangible products
Wireframes
For managers, the primary target audience, the mission is all about getting them the right data point at the right time in the right format. So naturally, the layouts are data-centric. The highly-graphic approach employs a number of Tufteisms, including sparklines and small multiples.
TEST
Design for ongoing performance analysis and optimization
UI Design
The mobile environment presents challenges to UX Designers. Down-view content or nav bar elements aren’t always easy to reach, especially while walking or with spontaneous app use. Worse, phones have small screens, and fingers are blunter than cursors. To minimize navigational movement, both haptically and visually, key navigation elements were designed into the screens, and even the data.
Creating that navigation efficiency requires a consistent navigation theme across a range of elements. Certainly buttons, but also text, chart elements, and entire data groupings. The common theme here is a rectangular shape with a sense of floating. A feel of pressability. That floating quality also played to the brand name and mission.
