OnTrack By Team Quetzal

Literature Review

Healthcare Landscape

Our Competitors

In‑hospital Shadowing

We observed how each role in the discharge team interacted with the patients and with each other during in-depth shadowing sessions. We identified pain points and opportunities for increased collaboration during these interactions.

Expert Interviews

We consulted experts in healthcare, care administration, pedagogy, human-computer interaction, and service design throughout our process to gain insight into how we could increase patient engagement and improve patient-provider communication at hospitals.

Interviews

To gain in depth understanding of a patient’s experience during the discharge process and after, we interviewed over 15 patients who were recently discharged from the hospital. We also visited them in their homes to see where they kept their discharge packets and how they managed their complex medication regimen.

Diary Studies

We gave diaries to patients so they could record their thoughts and feelings for 10 days after discharge from the hospital. They also recorded if they were able to follow their care instructions each day, as well as personal obstacles and challenges that made following instructions difficult.

Rehab Facility Visits

Through interviews, we found that heart failure patients who visited cardiac rehab facilities had lower readmission rates than those who did not. We gained access to a rehab facility where we observed some of the best practices used in keeping the patient motivated.

Affinity Diagram

Our interviews and shadowing sessions generated over 1,400 notes which we grouped into meaningful clusters using an affinity diagram. We used this process to draw high-level insights that provided the basis for generating design ideas.

Patient Personas

Through our primary research, we discovered the common behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that influence non-compliance, synthesizing these findings to create patient personas. We also used findings from our literature review to decide on the medical conditions and age group for the personas we developed.

Journey Map

We came across a variety of stories about patients’ care transition journeys. We synthesized this information to create a hospital journey, focusing on opportunities for additional collaboration between patients and providers in creating the discharge plan.

Setting the direction

To understand what design ideas would be most feasible and have the highest impact, we created a short-list of 40 ideas of possible solutions based on 10 of our top findings. We then asked our client to map these ideas to an impact vs. feasibility matrix while explaining their rationale.

Testing Our Early Visions

To validate the need for certain features, we created storyboards and shared them with providers and patients to get their quick reactions, as well as trigger deeper conversations about their needs.

Role Playing

We used generative role-play to brainstorm what tablet interactions might be effective and engaging in the context of a hospital space.

Paper Prototyping

Next, we tested our best interface ideas with patients and providers using paper prototypes to discover which interactions they found most effective and engaging.

Interactive Wireframes

After selecting the most effective interaction base, we created semi-functional wireframes and tested how usable patients found each screen.

Wizard of Oz

We worked in the backend to manually simulate and test features that weren’t yet functional, but that we intended to include in our final design.

Functional Prototyping

Synthesizing our testing findings from previous design iterations, we created a functional prototype with high-fidelity visuals. We observed how patients used it, both at the hospital and at home, to test the usability and look and feel.