Six Months.
Two Projects.
One Designer.
The Product
This case study shares my six-months worth of work as the Senior Designer on A'alda Vet360. It details how I juggled two projects in a new industry, and applied technical UX amd UI skills to tackle real-world challenges.
At A'alda I worked on Vet360. Vet360 is a cloud-based electronic medical record system for veterinary clinics that consolidates all major functions such as creating medical records, managing reservations, accounting, and managing pet owners. It consolidates all in-house operations into one, improving the quality and efficiency of medical care. While working on Vet360 my role often overlapped with Product Owners and Business Analysts.
Vet360 explained through a simple infographic
My role as a product designer included
Project 1-Queue Management
Problem Statement
The current manual/semi-automated processes for appointment scheduling, billing, hospitalization, and walk-in handling are inefficient, leading to potential delays and errors in patient care. The queue management system aims to address these challenges by automating and optimizing these processes, leading to improved operational efficiency and a better experience for both the clinic staff and the patient.
Introduction
The Queue Management System for the Vet 360 is a software solution designed to optimize and streamline the appointment scheduling and patient flow process within a veterinary clinic or hospital. The system aims to enhance the efficiency of patient care, reduce waiting times, and improve the overall experience for both veterinary staff and pet owners.
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Essentially the only 'live' element of the entire HMS.
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Allows the user to view the different activities with regard to the appointments as and when they progress.
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The client may filter the queue based on whichever hospital they would like to get the information on, or based on a specific doctor, the timeframe that they wanna view it for or other such filters.
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The 'create' option is used to create new appointments. This includes the option of a 'walk-in' appointment as well as an 'on call' appointment.
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The queue is divided into distinct stages, each representing a stage in the lifecycle of an appointment.
A feature analysis was done of competing products
This was done to understand how different products handled the same problem
Target Users
The primary target users of this queue management system are either Paravets or Front Desk professionals.
Mapping the user journey
Subsequent to identifying the relevant statuses I tried to map the relevant user journeys to go deeper into the process.
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In-depth look
For a more in-depth look into the findings of tracing the user journey. Please click here
Pain Points
To understand user pain points and needs, we conducted:
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Interviews and User Calling: With frequent users to identify frustrations with the current system.
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How queue management is currently handled. On Excel or Paper!
User Personas / Stories
User Story 1
Overall view of the hospital (Homepage) - As a front desk personnel/vet/paravet, I want to understand the overall status of the hospital in terms of how busy each operational stage is as soon as I log in to the portal. This will help effectively manage the hospital operations.
User Story 2
Appointment Creation and Management - As a front desk personnel, I want to efficiently schedule appointments for clients and their pets, assign veterinarians, set appointment types, and manage the appointment queue.
User Story 3
Billing and Payment Management - As a front desk personnel, I want to generate accurate invoices based on services provided, process payments, and keep track of clients in the billing queue.
User Story 4
Hospitalization Management - As a veterinary staff member, I want to manage patient admissions, monitor their progress, record treatments and medications, and set discharge dates.
User Story 5
Walk-In Handling - As a front desk personnel, I want to efficiently manage walk-in patients, assign them to available veterinarians, and ensure timely treatment.
User Story 6
Client and Pet Profile Creation - As a doctor/paravet/front desk personnel, I want to create and update client profiles with contact details and pet information, ensuring accurate record-keeping and new client registration.
User Story 7
Client screen update - As a front desk personnel, I want to update client view screens in real-time to inform clients about the status/token number of their appointment and thereby manage client expectations effectively.
User Story 8
Whiteboard - As a veterinary doctor/hospital director, I want to make announcements in real-time to inform staff about various situations, hospital conditions and other important information thereby communicating with the staff without having to physically go and speak with them.
Solution
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Reception management that visualizes the flow within the hospital, from arrival to payment.
You can grasp the patient status in real time, from the list of reservations and reception at the time of visit to consultation and waiting for payment. It makes the communication between staff smoother and makes the operation in the hospital more efficient, such as responding flexibly to unannounced visits and sharing important points in reception notes.
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An improved upcoming appointment card
The first iteration of the upcoming appointment card was found by users to be slightly confusing and was also extremely cluttered. So I redesigned the card to include only important contextual information and keep the rest at the click of an arrow.
An all new Kanban board for easy sorting
It was not possible in the list view to sort appointments or move them to different stages. So I designed a Kanban view in which appointments would simply be drag and drop from one stage to another. This feature was particularly liked by users.
Usability Testing through heat maps
Sanyo Clinic
Tanaka Clinic
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Impact
73% of users switched over from paper/excel to our new queue
43% users who were surveyed really liked the Kanban view
Increased user satisfaction: Surveys post-launch indicated higher satisfaction levels with the products queue management system
Project 2-Doctors Calendar
Problem Statement
Veterinary hospitals face challenges in efficiently managing and visualizing daily appointment schedules for individual veterinarians. The current system lacks a clear, consolidated view of each veterinarian's availability, which leads to scheduling conflicts, underutilized time slots, and communication delays with clients. This results in operational inefficiencies and decreased client satisfaction.
User Research / Pain Points
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How appointments are currently scheduled: On whiteboards and paper.
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How appointments are currently scheduled: On excel sheets
User Story 1
As a receptionist, I want to view the availability and appointments of all veterinarians in a single, organized interface
User Story 2
As a head doctor/administrator, I want to quickly identify available time slots, avoid scheduling conflicts, and provide accurate updates to clients, ensuring smooth clinic operations and improved satisfaction for both clients and veterinarians.
User Story 3
As a veterinarian, I want to view my schedule for the day in a clear and organized format so that I can manage my schedule and appointments.
Early Iterations
This iteration was one of the earliest attempts at making a doctor calendar with only appointments shown. However this iteration was parked as it did not cover block times and unavailable hours
with the white empty spaces doing little to indicate the status of those hours.which was a requirement that came up over the course of designing. This appointment view was still demanded by a lot of users so we made some adjustments.
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This iteration was discarded because on review it was found that users confused the available slots marked by green as appointments of some sort and thought the white slots indicated availability. Moreover the statuses and their colour were appearing disjointed
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Defining a logical hierarchy of status colours
A logical hierarchy of status colours was defined based on different stages of the admission process and used thereafter in the calendar.
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Simple and smooth veterinary appointment management
I designed a reservation function built into the electronic medical record. There is no need to operate multiple systems to manage owner and pet information. In addition to displaying reservations in calendar and list format, it also supports switching views by veterinarian and appointments.
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Ability to create dual type of appointments
Earlier walk-in appointments were made on paper and on-call appointments were fed into an excel sheet. Now the entire system has been consolidated into one interface.
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A new list view
I further designed a list view that would provide all the information in a chronological view by date.
Depending on the filter used the list view would show information for a single doctor or all doctors.
Impact
48 % users who were earlier using pen and paper switched over to the new calendar
The new doctors view combined with appointment view satisfied both legacy customers and new users
