Access Health Online
ACT Health & Digital Transformation Agency
Helping new parents ensure their child is health checked and immunised
Creating ACT’s first community health booking service with the Digital Transformation Agency
Client
ACT Health & DTA
Role
Research, Service design, UX
All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of ACCENTURE OR ERGON ENERGY.
Problem
More than 660,000 people seek non-urgent medical assistance through any one of seven Community Health Centres in the ACT. With only in-person and phone appointments possible, many people suffer long wait times on the phone, struggling to book and manage in the call centre hours of 9-5.
Challenge
ACT Health partnered with the newly established Digital Transformation Agency in 2016 as an opportunity to learn how design thinking can be used to understand and design a new health service that is digital first and based on human insight and needs.
“How might we ensure new babies and children are booked in to receive the correct immunisations and health checks at the right time?”
Solution & MY ROLE
Over 6 months, a team made up of ACT Health experts, DTA coaches and Fjord/Accenture designers used a service design ‘double diamond’ approach to develop an intuitive digital portal for new parents to confidently schedule their child’s health checks and immunisations at the right times.
I helped the team throughout the entire project, guiding thr team through the discovery research, ideation and prototyping phase, and the design and delivery phase.
New mums had the flexibility to plan and book online at a time that suited them, instead of calling contact centre between 9-5
The booking portal addressed new parents’ questions and anxieties about immunisation and health check appointments
End-to-end ‘moving home’ journey
We ensured all moments in the ‘moving home’ journey were considered and designed for. Using online, email and SMS touch points, customers were kept up to date with the right information at the right time.
Introducing My Account
Along with the digital services, we designed a simple My Account registration process needing just 3 types of information. By confirming their account number and email, they could start using My Account within minutes.
Design process
Over 6 months the team worked in Canberra collaboratively through in-depth research interviews and shadowing, through to rapid prototyping and finally designing and delivering a digital service that touched on key moments through key channels, such an SMS, online and clinic information pamphlets.
INDEPTH DISCOVERY WITH ACT HEALTH AND CONSUMERS
Across the ACT, we spent 5 weeks conducting secondary and primary research to understand the service landscape and identify the needs of ACT health consumers and ACT Health staff.
We spent time with call centre staff, administration staff in clinics, health practitioners and nurses to learn about the needs and challenges of the Community Health experience.
We spent time with over 25 many former and current patients and health care consumers. We interviewed them in their homes, as well as joined some of them on their appointments, to get a real-time and contextual understanding of their experiences and needs.
I developed a synthesis framework for the team to capture the key information from each interview - behaviours, needs, pain points, current solutions and anxieties, as well as a high level user journey.
The “empathy wall” of synthesised research interviews
UNDERSTANDING THE USER JOURNEY AND NEEDS
We mapped the journey of a new parent, from the moment they learned they were pregnant to visiting community heath clinics for their child to recieve health checks and immunisations.
The ‘new parent’ service journey with phases, activities, emotions, pain points, current tools/solutions as well as the ‘backstage’ ACT Health activities mapped
The Service map was refined and designed to make it sharable for wider ACT Health
Presenting the teams research findings in weekly ‘open houses’ at the DTA
Presenting the teams research findings in weekly ‘open houses’ at the DTA
TESTING PAPER PROTOTYPES EARLY TO ITERATE
Three rounds of testing and iterating prototyped concepts
Paper prototypes of key flows were sketched so we could start showing end-users quickly
Testing future-state concepts using scenarios and storyboards to get initial response
Test participants tested the paper prototypes and provided feedback
Through weekly sprints, the team rapidly prototyped and tested concepts and key flows, refining and iterating with higher fidelity each week.
making sense of feedback and iterating prototypes
Each sprint we prototyped and tested concepts of the booking experience, from storyboards and paper prototypes through to clickable prototype, and then coded html prototypes.
Synthesising feedback from interview on the paper prototypes
Each sprint we synthesis the feedback on the latest prototypes we tested
Printouts of the html prototypes we tested in sprints 4 & 5
Designing and developing the validated prototypes
Ongoing usability testing to emsure copy was clear, interactions were clear and customers were satisfied with the service and timing of communications
Designing the service moments beyond online
The team also designed other key moments in the service, thinking about the full journey from awareness, through to follow up and booking the next appointment.
Printed materials at the hospital for expecting parents were designed and iterated, as well as personalised SMS messages to remind booked appointments.
“Mathias was able to take our business focused requirements and turn them into something clean, easy to use and customers focused. Consistent feedback from the project sponsor and post show cases was that the overall customer experience was fantastic.”
Impact
Within 3 months of Moving Home and My Account being launched, there was a reduction of almost 10,000 calls to the Ergon Energy contact centre, saving approximately $200,000 in business costs.
With the foundational UX, design and implementation of the first of many My Account services, Ergon have been equipped to design and launch more digital self-service capabilities for their customers.