Holistic condition history
My Role
Lead experience designer (UX/UI) + User testing
Collaborators
Medical director, Data science team + Product manager
Problem
The original view of someone’s health history was one long chronological list of events. This made it cumbersome for users to recall details related to a health concern, and impossible to view the "full picture" to answer simple questions like how long they'd been dealing with a specific condition/health event.
Desired Outcomes
Create a holistic condition-specific view for someone that helps reduce the cognitive load of recalling health history.
Key types of users to design for were those managing their own chronic conditions; and caregivers helping a loved one manage.
Design concepts + User interviews
I worked with the data science and clinical teams to understand the types of data available in order to create rough concepts for feedback to inform final designs.
Co-led sessions with 7 existing users of the app, including caregivers and self-managed users. Sought to understand several key things, including:
Which conditions/episodic events are people interested in tracking, or not?
What information about those conditions/episodes do people want to view?
Where could this live and what naming conventions resonate?
Implementing Learnings
Give users control to show or hide what they want and when.
Just because we had the data, didn’t mean users wanted to see it. Sensitive conditions like anxiety and depression weren't desirable to see upfront so users were prompted to "get started" which enabled the initial view and gave them control over hiding anything they didn't want to see.
Don't over design it.
Using data visualization was well received because of how it "looked" but didn't make sense in how it functioned. Since records overlap, a pie chart wasn't an accurate way to present the data. Used iconography consistent with other areas of the app for easy user recognition and distinction.
Allow for the ability to manually add information, but in a way that could enable future capabilities instead of limit them.
Identified info similar to a new patient intake form that people could manually add to round out their health history. Included adding a person's allergies, surgeries and family history. Also created a centralized view of a user's immunization history.
Although we couldn't automatically get certain things from the data, designed flows that allowed us to integrate into other areas of the app with the help of the user.
Implemented defined data sets that would enable future capabilities like providing insights based on known data and reduced user error of misspellings or incorrect terminology.
Allowed users to tag timeline events, doctors and prescriptions related to an episode or condition, with ability to filter by those tags.
Enabled users to link a medication to take in case of allergy exposure by allowing them to select from existing list of their prescriptions.
Results
Before these features were launched, I took a job with a new company (in spring 2021), so I don't have engagement metrics to share. Though, during that time, plans were underway for Journi to merge with Regence BlueCross/BlueShield and Asuris (health insurance brands owned by Journi's parent company, Cambia).
The Journi app experience eventually replaced the Regence/Asuris member apps. In early 2022, Journi was rolled out to 3M+ health plan members as new branded experiences for Regence and Asuris.