Product Design

Experience Design to optimize worker incident reporting in nursing care facilities with the iCura portal.

Project Overview

Project Type

Human Centered Design Undergrad Project

Industry

Healthcare

Area of Focus

Product Design, UX Design, Ideating, Prototyping, Testing, Figma

Roles

Researcher, Product Designer

Responsibilities

 Design strategy, user flows, information architecture, dashboard design, prototyping

Team

Team of 3: Sofia Perez-Baux, Ryan Lee, Avery Seibert

Timeline

March - May 2024 / 6 weeks

Product Overview

Problem Space

Nursing care workers often feel discouraged to report incidents and near misses in the workplace due to” ‘red tape,’ lack of documentation, or unknowing of HOSA protections. Healthcare work-based incidents tend to go underreported as a result of complicated paper-based forms, long process time of OSHA 300 reports,and inaccurate documentation.

Product Description 

iCura is a web-based portal that streamlines the incident reporting process within nursing homes. Accessible through desktop, tablet, and mobile, the iCura portal allows nurses to create, submit, edit, and review incident reports in real-time.

Our target users were:

• CNAs (Certified Nursing Assistants)
• CMAs (Certified Medical Assistants)
• LVNs (Licensed Vocational Nurses)

Design Process

1. Empathize

Research Insights

Through secondary research and competitive analysis of existing error reporting systems (ERS), we identified user pain points and assessed current design approaches.

Key Takeaways

The digital process should facilitate seamless creation, submission, editing, and reviewing of incident reports. We aimed to incorporate an AI chatbot for user assistance, a messaging system for staff communication, and a reminders feature to enhance the error reporting experience.

2. Ideate

Our design process began with a concept map to organize information and determine where content should go. Working as a team of three designers, the concept map also helped us collaborate and agree on how the product's features interacted with each other. This approach ensured that we were all aligned on the design direction and that the content was structured logically and effectively.

Concept map of the iCura portal.

3. Prototype

In the prototype stage, my team of three designers began by creating quick sketches to brainstorm and explore various ideas. This allowed us to experiment with different concepts and refine them based on user needs.

Sketches for the iCura portal

By developing individual low-fidelity wireframes, each designer was able to explore different design avenues, bringing unique perspectives to the table. To ensure the final product maintained a cohesive look and feel, we used a style guide, which helped us maintain design integrity across all prototypes.

Low-fidelity and High-fidelity mockup.

This approach not only streamlined our workflow, enabling us to work faster, but also allowed us to scale up the design process efficiently as we iterated on our ideas.

4. Testing

Objective 
Our team's objectives for the testing evaluation was to find usability issues within the iCura application and prioritize changes based on user needs and wants. This evaluation was conducted in an almost high-fidelity level design, including; standardized designs, mostly interactable components, and animations.

Methods
Our team implemented Moderator and Observer roles in order to actively compile the data being shared by three participants. The participants were encouraged to think out loud as they used the application to assist in the Observer’s note taking. The Observer focused on gathering themes that were shown across the multiple participants in order to accumulate a better understanding of the overall issues and positives that were portrayed. Our team used a feedback capture grid to collect responses from the participants after they walked through the prototype on their own. In their own words, without communicating with the Moderator or Observer, the participants filled out their ideas, questions, likes and dislikes about the system which guided our teams research discussions.

Results 
Overall, users absolutely loved iCura’s aesthetic, organization, animations, interactions, and extra features. However, the database did have issues ranging from font size, to unclear icons, to necessary prototype edits. Our team grouped the participants' feedback by sections: dashboard, new reports, all reports, messages, and chatbot.  

Dashboard
The most essential fixes of the iCura dashboard page are: Increase report button size, specify meaning of users work status, allow users to access reports from graphs, highlight month the data is being drawn from, and create cohesive report status across the application.

Design errors found through user feedback for the iCura Dashboard.

Design errors found through user feedback for the iCura All Reports page.

New Report
In the New Report section our users found a scrolling issue in the personal details page, where the dropdown menu goes back to the screen. The review page lacked titles for the sections and our user could not edit the sections. Lastly, when receiving confirmation that the report has been submitted, users recommended adding a data and time stamp. But ultimately, users loved design elements such as the navigation feature and simplistic organization of each question. P#2 loved the design but specifically noted the calendar animation saying, “this is great, who made this?”

All Reports
In All Reports, users loved the hover feature on status (incomplete/complete) but were confused on the context of incomplete and complete. Our team agreed this is confusing and our labels should be the same as those on the dashboard to include, submitted and declined. Users also wanted to receive notes from their reviewer and be able to reply to the reviewer P#2 said “there should be notes from the admin, like on top(of the case file).”

Design errors found through user feedback for the iCura New Report page.

Chatbot
Some essential fixes pertaining to iCura’s chatbot feature include describing the function, adding a back button to in progress reports, fixing broken close window feature, and differentiating the button from the rest of the page. When P#1 first saw the Chatbot button, they said, “This is for what?” so maybe differentiating the button with a white border would help distinguish the button from the background more. Users loved features such as AI typing animation and the ability to type in messaning field.

Messaging
Finally, we have the iCura messaging feature. Users loved the ability to converse with their co-workers, but believed the feature could do more. Some potential fixes include allowing users to share files via the messaging system on report history, increasing the size of the chat bar, allowing users to type the desired name in the top bar instead of bottom input field, and clarifying adding participants' process.

5. Implementation

Iteration

Explore the Design Evolution of the iCura Portal

To see how our designs evolved based on user feedback, simply click and hold the scrollbar to swipe between the "before" and "after" versions of the iCura portal. This interactive feature lets you easily compare the changes and understand the improvements we've made to enhance user experience.

Before <-> After

Create New Reports view with changes applied.

All Reports view with changes applied.

Final Designs

Dashboard interactivity of iCura.

New report user flow of iCura.

Create report user flow of iCura.

Takeaways

Collaborative Feasibility and Usability Assessment

Work collaboratively with developers, system security experts, and healthcare professionals to thoroughly evaluate the feasibility and user-friendliness of our proposed solution. Our idea must be technically sound, secure, and scalable to ensure successful and sustainable implementation.

User-Centered Design Refinement

To ensure the system meets the real needs of nursing facility workers, I’d have to refine the design based on comprehensive user testing. By testing the portal directly with staff, I gain valuable insights into their pain points, allowing for targeted improvements that enhance usability and effectiveness.

© 2024 Sofia Perez-Baux