UW Medicine Carefinding Experience

Redesigning the Carefinding Experience with

For my master's capstone, I partnered with UW Medicine’s digital experience team to redesign how patients find healthcare. My team and I conducted research and designed a new information experience including a step-by-step booking wizard and a contextual smart guide that provides suggestions and answers questions.

Role: Designer
Timeline: January 2023 - May 2023 (18 weeks)
Team: 1 Researcher, 2 Designers

Scroll to Prototype



The Problem

Finding healthcare is a confusing process. Patients often encounter frustrations determining insurance information and ensuring that providers meet their criteria, with information being spread across various difficult-to-navigate channels, sometimes even providing conflicting data. How might we deliver a single online source of truth and simplify the process for users trying to find care?

Our Solution

We created a new information experience for the desktop site, including a contextual smart guide and a new booking wizard.

CareCorner is a persistent navigation tool that anticipates needs. It is available on every page and uses aggregated user trends to generate appropriate suggestions based on what page the user is on and their navigation history.

Animated gif of the CareCorner feature. A blue quarter-circle in the lower right corner of the billing and insurance page reads "it seems like you are trying to pay a bill" with an action button and a label saying "hover for more options." When the mouse hovers over the corner, the shape expands to a rectangle, with additional options for finding whether insurance is accepted or finding a cost estimate.

A new booking wizard brings the care to the user using natural language processing and a recommendation system. It features filters, insurance card scanning, and a step-by-step information experience based on what users really want.

A pop-up window titled "book appointment online." The bold text reads "here are the dates and times your provider is available" at the top of the page. A card featuring a provider with portrait and details is on the left, with a grid of selectable dates and times next to it. A filters column lies along the right edge, showing date and time options. A pagination tracker is at the bottom, with labels for "primary concern," "insurance," "find a provider," and "book an appointment."

Healthcare is a complex space, and our assignment was broad. To avoid “boiling the ocean,” we derived specific research insights to narrow our problem:

Participants preferred not to have to call if they can avoid it.
Location and connection were top priorities participants looked for in a provider.
Lack of clarity in regards to insurance was the biggest frustration brought up.
Participants often felt lost and consistently wanted “all the pieces in one place.”

Our research included competitor analyses, site mapping, and literature review. We conducted a survey that received 39 respondents, 5 user interviews, and 2 SME interviews. UW Medicine additionally provided us with internal analytics and other quantitative data.

Putting the insights together, a clear picture formed: users’ key need is information processing, rather than access. Information was available, but users needed a less open-ended field to wade through. Our ideation focused on these aspects.

A blurred screenshot of the UW Medicine website. A low fidelity sidebar on the right edge is titled "my guide" and features icons with various functions, including "book a neurologist," "find care," "verify coverage," "estimate costs," "saved pages," and "my info."

A low-fidelity mockup of a provider search page. A search bar and button take the width of the page, while underneath, the results are laid out as cards in a grid. Two of the cards are stacked on top of each other.

A low-fidelity mockup of the booking wizard. The headline reads "tell us about yourself..." with a secondary question asking what is your primary concern, three buttons reading "find primary care" underneath. A fourth button reading "something else" is a bit lower. The my guide sidebar has "find care" grayed out, with "verify coverage," "estimate costs, "saved pages," and "my info" underneath. A pagination tracker is at the bottom, with labels for "tell us your needs," "find a provider," and "book an appointment."

A pop-up window titled "book appointment online." The bold text reads "what is your primary concern?" A text box has text typed into it, reading "I have a rash that isn't going away." Three suggested searches are clickable buttons, labeled "finding primary care," "nausea and fever," and "cold and cough." A pagination tracker is at the bottom, with labels for "primary concern," "insurance," "find a provider," and "book an appointment."

Research insight (1) showed that there was a user need to highlight and simplify online booking, leading to our design of the wizard. Using the concept of progressive disclosure, we wanted our users to not feel overwhelmed with the amount of knowledge, thus breaking it down into 4 steps, informed by our findings in insights (2) and (3).

CareCorner stemmed from research insight (4), motivating us to help guide users wherever they entered or wandered on the website. Since most users have a very specific purpose or information that they were searching for, we felt compelled to “narrow the haystack” and use a FAQ-like pattern to anticipate needs.

The orthopedic surgery page of the UW Medicine website. The quarter-circle of CareCorner is in the lower right, with the question "trying to book an orthopedic surgeon?" A button is underneath reading "book a consultation."

Due to time constraints, we utilized iterative concept testing through the prototyping phase rather than formal usability testing.

We lost a couple weeks early in the project from a researcher dropping out (and thus me stepping into a more generalist role and research taking longer), as well as decision paralysis from the scope of the design problem. While not as robust, this process allowed us to catch back up to schedule while still gathering the necessary data to validate our design.

A digital post-it board with instructions reading "move stickies around based on your ideal flow." Five boxes fill the board, each labeled, "page," "another page," or "last page." Stickies are scattered throughout the boxes.

An animated gif showing the scrapped card sorting feature. Instructions at the top read "use this space if you wish to sort through providers." Below that, a button reads "open notes." Five cards lie underneath, each showing a provider portrait, name, and details. The mouse drags the first card between the second and third, shifting the cards and placing the card down. A pagination tracker is at the bottom, with labels for "primary concern," "insurance," "find a provider," and "book an appointment."

Users needed information provided to them, but did not necessarily need help processing it. Originally we had a spatial sorting feature, but users found it confusing and unhelpful in concept tests and thus the feature was scrapped in favor of more familiar patterns.

We delivered a high-fidelity prototype and a UX report to the digital experience team, which now currently has similar features in development. Our components and mockups have been integrated into the team’s resources.

A screenshot showing the Figma components of the provider cards, including the arrows showing interactions.

This project was ultimately defined by a state of being caught between places: between wanting to create a creative, feasibility-be-damned design solution and feeling like we should create something that fits within existing systems; between wanting to take a systems-thinking approach and having the need to narrow our solution to just one part; between needing to get thorough user feedback and needing to move on quickly. We did a lot of waffling in our process, and that cost us time and design depth. As a designer, these are the dilemmas that excite and fuel me. Now having gone through the process, I am well-equipped to tackle the next one.