Triage

Product Design
User Interviews
UI Design

Overview

Becoming ill during a vacation to a foreign country presents a wide variety of issues that have to be dealt with, far beyond getting treatment. While statistics can be hard to find, some estimates state that up to 87%¹ of travellers will have some health issue during their trip. On a recent family vacation, my wife developed a tooth infection which required multiple visits before receiving a proper diagnosis. While we had travel medical insurance, we both experienced extreme anxiety in determining the appropriate medical facility, dealing with language barriers, and the ultimate financial cost. Triage was designed to help travellers find medical help, and navigate the process with more confidence and less anxiety.

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28931136

Research Phase

During the research phase, I sought to understand how travelers deal with unexpected illnesses during trips. This was accomplished via user interviews, reading personal accounts of illness, and reviewing apps that assist travelers throught illnesses.

Identifying user needs

Primary Research – User Interviews

While I had personal experience with the challenges of becoming ill while travelling, I needed to broaden my knowledge. I conducted research via on-street interviews and via social media. On-street interviews offer an opportunity to meet people outside your own socioeconomic circle, but can present a challenge for both parties. Mine in overcoming unease in speaking with strangers, and theirs in not wishing to be interrupted while going about their day. I was able to successfully interview travelers using both methods, learning about experiences more and less severe than my wife’s.

Some of the questions asked included:

• What was the most frustrating part of the process?
• Tell me something that surprised you when you were sick?
• What is one thing you wish you could have done while dealing with your illness?
• What did you do to prepare for emergencies during your trip?

Multiple interviewees commented on how surprised they were by their illness and how quickly it progressed. All the interviewees purchased travel health insurance, but none mentioned that their insurer provided assistance during their illness, which was my experience as well.

One of my interviewee’s gastro-intestinal illness progressed so rapidly, that they were unable to assist themselves and had to rely on a local escort to navigate the language and medical barriers. Another was able to get assistance on her own, but still commented on the feeling of isolation during the process.

Secondary Research – Market Research & Competitor Analysis

I first looked at the other apps used by travelers such as, Tripcase, Kayak, Hopper, & Sitata. A competitive analysis was performed to understand the focus areas, strengths, and weaknesses of travel apps, with a deeper focus on those offering emergency health assistance.

My analysis produced the following insights:

• Emergency health situations are not a focus: The majority of competitive apps on the market focus on organizing trips or presenting travel advisories. Sitata is the sole app that offers travellers the ability to deal with health emergencies.
• Few competitors: As mentioned above, Sitata appears to be the sole product that can assist with medical emergencies.

Mapping the Problem

User Journey’s

I mapped out a user journey based on the feedback collected during user interviews in order to highlight user goals, problem areas, and opportunities. The journey map allows us to easily visualize the process which a traveler would undergo, discover potential oversights, and begin understand their goals and barriers they may encounter.

The main user goals included:

• In non-emergency situations, determining how ill they were
• Receiving the appropriate treatment
• Navigating a foreign health care system

Some of the key challenges I identified are:

• Dealing with language barriers
• Determining the best course of action when symptoms are vague
• Locating the proper level of treatment

How Might We & Jobs To Be Done

To begin evolving features and dig deeper into the goals and challenges, I restructured those insights into Jobs To Be Done statements. These statements help focus on what a traveler experiencing illness is trying to do and why, as opposed to who they are or what they do.

• When I get sick while traveling, I want to find medical care, so I can get treatment.
• When trying to find a hospital, I want to know if they can treat my problem, so I can go to the best hospital right away.
• When I feel sick, I want to know if there are any alternatives (ex. Telehealth), so I can find the best type of care
• When speaking with medical staff, I want to be able to communicate with them in my language, so I can accurately describe my symptoms.

In all, a list of over two dozen jobs created. Those JBTD’s were condensed into a smaller list of How Might We statements, which help to focus on solution oriented brainstorming.

I then began to match the HMW statements to my user journey map to better understand where each HMW statement best fit, and to determine where I should focus my MVP. Given the limited time and resources, I elected to focus on the process of locating an appropriate local hospital or other facility.

Storyboarding

Using the user personals, competitive research, and the selected HMW statement, I developed a 3 pane sketch to rough out the initial flow of Triage. Following the 3 pane sketch, I developed a storyboard to explore how the app would be used by a traveler as they become ill. This allows us to better understand how Triage would be used in context.

Design & Prototyping

Branding

The use of green as a primary brand colour helps to evoke feelings of calm with its association with the natural environment. Burgundy evokes a confident strength, allowing users to feel assured that Triage offers accurate and helpful results.

In order to ensure maximum readability, Montserrat was selected for its clean geometric lines and variety of weights. A base type size of 16px was used to ensure legibility for the widest group of users. A ratio of 1.333 was used between each font size to create a clear typographic hierarchy throughout body copy, headers, and mice type.

Hi-Fidelity Mockups & Prototype

In order to simplify the process for travellers, Triage is designed as a progressive web app that can be easily accessed via any browser. This avoids the need to search or be redirected to app stores. It also minimizes any concerns about deep tracking used by Triage, as there are no permissions granted other than those allowed by the browser to any website.

Given the mental duress that a traveller or someone travelling with them would be under, the homepage is focused on assisting them. A single form field requests their location with previous searches presented in the autocomplete drop down.

Ethical collection of a person’s information was a key concern. People are reticent when giving up personal details online, especially when those details are of a medical nature. At each point where we request information from a traveller, we offer an explanation of why they are being asked to provide those details, as well as what they will be used for. This assists travellers in understanding why each piece of data is necessary and reinforces that their information will be used only to assist them.

A surprising challenge was how to frame the question of a person’s sex, when best practices are to avoid asking for that information. In this case, biological sex can have significant effects on the available treatment options, so I felt it was an important question to ask. The limited nature of biological sex simplified the process, yet I wanted to account for potential travellers that did not fall into the commonly binary nature of it. All without overly complicating the data entry process. Choices such as “Other” felt offensive, and I was concerned that “Intersex” may be misinterpreted with gender. In the end, I elected to offer three options of “Male, Female, & Neither”. I felt that these avoided the pitfalls of other options, yet clearly conveyed the information we needed to collect. This would be an area of focus in future revisions.

Common symptoms are presented below the search field, allowing for quick entry of their details. Multiple symptoms can also be added to their search.

Search results are organized to provide those using the site with key details to allow them to quickly select an appropriate medical facility. Hours, foreign resident fees, time to travel, average wait times, and ratings allow us to better compare each of the results.

Typical online searches for medical facilities do not display their capabilities. The tags presented at the bottom of each result allow those searching to compare the proficiencies of that location. For example: avoiding a closer hospital that may not have an emergency department.

The quick help drawer provides users with phone number for the local emergency services and a 24/7 health service.

Conclusion and Next Steps

Future additions to Triage would include adding users travel insurance in order display any conditions of their plan, along with local contact numbers. Monetization opportunities could include white labeling for insurance providers, along with offering options to purchase travel insurance prior to a trip. Integrated language translations that can work without an active internet connection could also be uniquely helpful to users.

More Work

Contact Me

I am always open to hearing about new opportunities where I can apply my skills, share my knowledge, and continue to grow in the field.