PolyCares+

Care For All Students

If there was one thing that Cal Poly students had to say was the most frustrating about the campus, it would hands down be the Health Center. There was never any clear communication between students and the Health Center. Most complaints from students would be constant confusion, increased wait times, and scheduling inconvenience. There is no mobile app that has attempted to relieve any of these problems so the Health Center reached out to us Graphic Communication students to figure out a solution.

March 2018 – June 2018

Affinity Mapping

As a team we listed all the possible problems, opportunities, and important aspects of the typical health clinic experience. We then organized these ideas into groups that all have a common theme. This is how we figured out the features that we wanted to focus on to reach our solution. These features included: scheduling appointments, on-call/chat with doctor, and accessing the pharmacy.

Competitive Analysis

Key Findings

SCHEDULING APPS:

1. Users can schedule in-person appointments and view available times that are updated in real-time.

2. Can be used for non-medical scheduling.

3. Cannot virtually chat with medical professionals.

MEDICAL APPS:

1. Users can virtually chat with medical professionals and are provided educational resources within the app.

2. Free to download but not free to virtually chat.

3. Cannot schedule in-person appointments.

User Quotes

In order to learn more about the problems with the Health Center we went across campus and interviewed students between the ages of 18-22 and spanning across different majors. All students have different reasons for having to go visit the Health Center so we wanted to find as many different scenarios as possible.

Key Findings

• Most people would prefer to meet with a doctor in person rather than virtual chat.

• Students would like to have a 24/7 on-call type of service from the Health Center.

• Students would like to be provided some sort of medical history or access to their medical records.

• Because of the current hours, some students had to skip class to make it to their appointment/walk-in.

• Users would like to see specific doctors, making a relationship with one doctor would be better than seeing multiple different doctors.

• Not many students utilize/know of all of the resources the health center provides.

User Personas

From the interviews, we created Cal Poly personas who could benefit from our app. We used the goals and frustrations of our personas to create user-focused decisions that helped us move forward in developing our product, PolyCares+.

Katie’s User Flow

Katie begins to feel her injuries begin to worsen after a few more weeks of soccer practice. Her ankle injury seems to not get any better so she books an appointment at the Health Center through the PolyCares app.

 Low-Fidelity Prototype

From sketching to low-fidelity wire-framing, our goal in this phase was to focus on improving usability rather than the visual design. In order to have our user tests not get lost in the design, we decided to keep everything in a grayscale.

Key Findings

• Thought that hamburger menu was in a weird place but liked the simple and minimalistic design.

• Thought app was straightforward and would like to see the contact information of the doctor.

• Participant hates going to the Health Center and making appointments there.

• Initially confused with the bottom nav and thought that there should be more information about the doctors.

Usability Testing

We tested out high-fidelity prototype by administering the proper documents stating our testing and our process. We both took turns administering the test while the other recorded any errors, issues, or speculations. Afterwards, we collected qualitative data from the post-test interview and calculated quantitative data from our system usability survey (SUS).

Task 1

You want to schedule an appointment with the Health Center but your only availability is Thursday, May 17th at 10:30am. Find a way to schedule an appointment at this time for a check up regarding Allergies and fill out the check-in form.

Task 2

You’ve just gotten out of your appointment and want to know how to take better care of yourself. The doctor recommended eating more fruits but you want to know what fruits to eat. Search through the app to see where you can learn about the benefits of fruits.

Task 3

You have a consistent cough and want to order medicine from the pharmacy through the app. Go to the pharmacy menu and shop by Allergy/Cold and pay for the cheapest Allegra medicine with a new card.

Task 4

You just finished your appointment but you forgot what your prescription is. Go chat with a doctor on-call and ask them to look up your prescription for you. Then, go to the pharmacy and purchase your prescription with your Debit card.

Key Findings:

• Users thought hamburger menu was for settings.

• Thought the app was pretty straightforward and people were more interested in exploring the application.

• Lack of scrolling made it hard for users to navigate, they really wanted to scroll for some screens.

• Users like the idea of scheduling this way, rather than calling or walking-in to the health center.

• Although it wasn’t intended for our original purpose, users loved the pharmacy screens and the ability to order items through the app with a card.