Doctor Profile Experience on
Healthgrades.com
Overview
Healthgrades is a company that helps connect people to the right doctor, with a comprehensive list of every doctor in the nation. But right now, the site is used primarily as a directory with a very high bounce rate.
Problem
The current profile had a dated look, and equally as dated code with a web of complicated business rules. I was tasked with rethinking the profile types, for a more user-centered experience, and introducing new elements into a design system.
How do we create an experience that addresses user needs and expectations while maintaining business and partner requirements?
Goal
• Understand and display information based on user behavior and expectations
• Increase call conversion, traffic, page views, click-thru
• Maintain partner contract requirements
• Update and maintain new visual design standards
Challenges
Rigid content requirements
Stakeholder resistance to change
Condensed timeline ( >1 month )
Dirty data
My Role
I led the design of the doctor profile experience, working alongside another designer/prototyper, a researcher, and multiple product managers. I led this process from kickoff to detailed visual design.
Research
What
• Stakeholder interviews
• Provider profile audit
• Data analysis
• Market research
• User testing (in-person and online)
• Information architecture
Why
Identify redundancies and variants, flag areas that could be consolidated, and note content tied to business obligations.
Understand reaction to our current profile, and organize page information in terms of priority.
Understand existing behavior through analytics
Results
Information is overwhelming and hard to understand
”Hard to find what I was looking for.. very cluttered”
”There is a lot of information, but illogically arranged and hard to read”
The Information is worth reading, if you’re willing
”While there is room for improvement, there is a lot of information I’d like to know”
”its a comprehensive listing about the doctor that includes almost everything a patient would want to know”
Users want to see basic details, contact, accepted insurance, and reviews- regardless of their care journey
There are A LOT of business constraints tied to what- and where- information is displayed
Page Structure
Using my research as a starting point, I blocked out basic content organization, identifying elements tied to business rules and user preferences, for the summary section and page layout.
Hi-Fi Wires by page section
Each section of the page had varying degrees of complexity, and needed focus around new functionality, interaction and design.
Stakeholder interviews per page section
Deeply understand the intricacies, data dependencies, and business rules at a section level.
Section design spike
Deeply understand existing behavior, focus on experience and interaction, account for different states and variants.
Test prototypes
Test for usability and design preference.
What Changed?
Summary
Human Objective: I want a basic summary of information, and an easy way to contact.
Business Objective: Conversion needs to stay greater than or equal to prospective patients calling our number, or book online through our booking integration.
New clear and flexible ‘contact’ component including conditional logic around which contact method to display when. (This can include online booking, requests, and phone numbers types.)
Strip any information that isn’t highest priority for both users and the business.
Easy navigation and awareness of information we offer for each provider.
Ratings
Human Objective: I want to read other patient experiences, and sort by my preferences.
Interactive breakdown of NPS rating, display dispositions as star ratings (method in which they are captured).
Increase review initiation behavior with more engaging entry, to hit OKR: increase % review submits. (A/B test.)
Future Consideration: require written review, not just star ratings.
Comments
Human Objective: I want to read about other patients experience.
Business Objective: unique content (SEO!). Provider partners were frustrated with how difficult it was to reply to their patients.
Aggregate provider-supplied reviews, patient reviews.
Add easy way for providers to reply to a specific comment.
Entice users to write more content with a more engaging entry point (A/B Test).
Location
Human objective: I want to see office locations and choose what I want to do next (call, directions, fax).
Business Objective: Known issue of dirty data. Duplicate offices listed, practice and office location discrepancies. Get patients to contact the office.
Work with data science to clean up location data.
Streamline display logic (practice vs office).
Update contact method and insurance display to be less visually overwhelming.
Insurance
Human objective: I want to know if the provider takes my insurance.
Interactive 'insurance check' search component that returns insurance acceptance by that provider, or redirects the user to providers who do.
Persist selected insurance to additional search queries, directing users to relevant doctors.
Doctor Experience
Human objective: I have a specific problem I need treated, I want to know if the doctor treats it.
Business objective: Display proprietary patient volumes data, add more unique content -cross link articles about conditions/procedures.
Interactive 'experience check' search component that returns performance rate for that doctor, or redirects to doctors who do treat it.
persist condition through additional search queries, directing users to relevant doctors.
Background Information
Human Objective: I want to scan the provider’s background and qualifications to learn more about them, and see if they’re the right fit
Business Objective: Partner providers want to display their accolades, and we want to display proprietary background check data.
Technical cleanup to display only information that the provider has supplied.
Re-order information to display in order of importance determined by user testing.
Completed Profile + Visual Design
I systematically documented update styles (typography, iconography, color, interaction) and worked with our dev team to import these new styles into Storybook, to inform a component list we could build a design system off of.
Results
Learnings
This was an exercise of speed and collaboration. It forced me, and all cross functional team members, to be diligent about scope, process, and communication. It also highlighted the importance of a design system- while we were able to get a lot done quickly, we now need to identify swap out old stylesheets and CSS overrides to use our new reusable components.
Most importantly, this project demonstrated how greatly design can impact the performance of a website.
Performance
See it live: Healthgrades.com
(Tests have impacted the design and functionality originally rolled out)
Call Conversion ↑up 2.3%
Bounce Rate ↓down 32%
Page views/site engagement ↑up 15%
Net Revenue $2.7 million