Reposition and repurpose a medical aids platform by persona and journey research
Vilans | Experience Innovation
| Client
Vilans
| Project Length
8 Weeks
Challenge:
Redesign the hulpmiddelenwijzer.nl platform, to be more useful and closer to its users: users with disabilities, caretakers and health professionals.
Approach
Through in-depth interviewing, personas, experience journey mapping, and co-design in an ideation workshop; digital prototyping, and validating concepts through live demonstration and evaluation survey to a panel of users.
Solution
We designed 3 ways of bringing the hulpmiddelenwijzer.nl up to date, and evaluated those concepts with users, with one clear preferred concept, giving direction to Vilans’ redesign of their platform.
The Platform
The hulpmiddelenwijzer.nl is a government supported platform from Vilans (the National Centre of Expertise for Long-term Care in the Netherlands). Their website is a complete and independent library of disability aids launched in the market (in dutch - hulpmiddelen), helping users, caretakers and professionals to learn about products.
Empathize
A complex journey to a comfortable life with the right disability aids.
Starting out from visitor data of the hulpmiddelenwijzer.nl, our team dove deep into the disability aids context - interviewing internal stakeholders, and later users, caretakers and health professionals. Through interviewing, a complex journey of finding the right disability aids became clear to the team, where users are uncertain most of the time, and go through a difficult and impactful change in their lives.
To manage the complexity with insights, our team designed an experience journey map, defined 5 personas, the main jobs-to-be-done, and evaluated problems with our problem insight canvas. Two personas stood out from the rest, namely users who are actively learning about their conditions, and professionals who work isolated and need support from a platform such as the hulpmiddelenwijzer.nl. These stakeholders had unmet needs, and were looking for a solution on other platforms, such as social media and supplier websites.
First wow-effect: the site is relevant for users that want to self-service their journey of finding the right aid, instead of relying on the specialist advice, we call them the “regisseurs” and we decided to focus on this segment instead of designing for all.
Second wow-effect: finding the right aid, is about exploring new solutions people don’t know yet, instead of confirming what they already know. We decided to focus on ideating a better exploration process that starts with a known solution for the user but gives context, challenges it, and gives alternatives, instead of a standard search proces.
Tools used: Customer Journey Mapping, Personas, Job-to-be-done, Problem Insight
"Finding the right aid is a back-and-forth between parties: searching the internet, joining patient associations, calling suppliers, going to fairs, going to the store, only to find out that the aid that is right for me won’t be reimbursed by the government. This is a big problem for me"
— Lieke, user
Design - Ideation
Digital ideation for a more customer-centric hulpmiddelenwijzer
In a remote session, our team shared learned insights with the internal organization, and facilitated an ideation workshop with 12 team members — to rethink the hulpmiddelenwijzer.nl from the personas’ perspective triggering the team on (1) broadening the information scope, (2) simplifying discovery processes and (3) being more present to users, generating +180 ideas in valuable input about new ways of engaging with the users. Together, we defined 3 different and unique ways of helping personas on discovering, finding, and evaluating the right aid for themselves:
By being open and onboarding influencers like users and experts;
By designing a smarter discovery process, simulating a question and answer dialogue with a specialist;
By developing a process visualization with supporting tools to prepare better meeting with expert, instead of automating it on the site
Tools used: Cycle brainstorm canvas, Pitch cards, Miro.
Design - Prototyping
Bringing ideas to life and new platform concepts
The following task was turning post-it concepts into a value proposition and a visual concept. Each concept played a different part of the assigned jobs-to-be-done: discovering new aids easier, finding the right model for you and evaluating your choices during and after purchase.
The design of each concept (open, smart & process) was done through one-pager websites to communicate the concept, define features and give users an impression of how the new hulpmiddelenwijzer.nl works.
3 different propositions, one for each concept with their unique style and appeal. The problem worth solving was clear, however the best way to solve it was up for the users’ evaluation.
Tools used: Visual prototyping with Squarespace, quantitative surveying.
Design - Customer Validation
Concept validation straight from the users
We designed an experiment to validate through these concepts: a live demonstration of each concept through Zoom and a concept preference survey (qualitative + quantitative). The user panel could ask questions about each concept and the validation survey. After the demonstration, our team sent individual survey asking respondents to compare concepts’ usefulness and use intent.
After 18 entries, clear winners were defined, but most importantly, a priority was set for the team at Vilans to develop this platform further, together with new insights about their journey to getting the right aids. Users are looking for control and confidence on this complex process, that goes through the unknown territory of medical terms, governmental support and many different aid models.
Tools used: Zoom, WebinarGeek, Google Forms, Miro, Keynote.
The result
A new positioning for the Hulpmiddelenwijzer where exploration of the right aid is the core element plus a new insight in personas and customer journey to help being present at moments of truth within the medical ecosystem in the Netherlands.
Project Team
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| Product & Service Design Consultant