Dignity Health

Medical service user-experience research

Using testing and research analysis to inform information architecture improvements

Over the course of the year engagement, I worked on several aspects of Dignity Health’s website, to include their research & UX, Find a Doctor Search improvement (pictured above - wireframes here), SSO transition, streamlining their on-boarding workflows, and appointment booking. Their customer facing web experience needed upgrades and overall improvement, one of my remits was their Information Architecture. I did in-depth research to assist in their upcoming change in Information Architecture, which is the focus of this page.

The TL:DR

After research and testing we recommended the following practices along with a revised IA.

1. Bring frequently used tasks to the surface

2. Simplify - make the experience feel easy

3. Clarify the labels and their organization

4. Improve search

I led a small UX team in performing this research. Initially, we gathered all pertinent information and fully understood the goal of the client. While the client had analytics to show that they had low conversion and high bounce rates, and there’s really no better way to understand the analytics than interviewing the users to get a little deeper.

Step 1: Tree Jack

Using the existing sitemap, we invited 45 people to take our test. They were asked to choose a plain text path based on each of the 15 questions. The 3rd party app created data visualizations to show the paths that were taken. We learned that search is frequently used when the user doesn’t know where to find the answer. We were also able to pinpoint areas of confusion, difficulty, and unnecessary complexity.

Step 2: Card Sort

The card sorting exercise can help to clarify the user’s mental model and expectation for the terminology being used. We tested 16 people and found that most saw the cards in 2 primary models.

Step 3: Usability Testing

Iterating on the information learned from the Tree Jack and Card Sorting exercises, I built a clickable prototype and invited 10 testers, this time ages 50-75. I chose this demographic as a point of focus because they are the most likely to need and use medical services. They each came to my office and ran through a script of 11 questions. Even though this demographic of people are not digital natives, their responses to the questions were very similar to the answers from the 2 previous tests with all ages and very frequently used the search bar for anything unclear.

Step 4: Revise IA

Based on our findings and analysis of the information, we recommended a new IA to our client that simplifies and reorganizes based on the results of testing. We built into the IA the analysis of the findings from the user testing. We recommended reworking the IA to be flatter and wider so that we can provide the user with their top tools as expected. We updated the labels based on the card sort and added functionality - and yet the user’s experience by making it feel simpler. By removing the lesser used noise at the top of the IA and moving it to the footer the purpose of the page is clarified. The user knows this space is for them.

Note: The client merged with another company just after we made our IA recommendation and their web experience improvements were put on pause. Hoping to update with a live link here soon!

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