Bothell Psychiatric
Building a website to connect psychiatric care with clients and their providers.
My Role
UX Designer
Client
Bothell Psychiatric
Focus Areas
UX, UI, IxD
Team
Chris (PM), Rumeal (Dev), Nick (Designer)
The Challenge
Bothell Psychiatric asked Chris, our freelance project manager to build a website that could better communicate the services they offer, and build care management tools for an enhanced patient experience. I was brought on to design the site, along with a developer.
After splitting off from another practice, Dr. Robert Devney formed Bothell Psychiatric. A hastily constructed site was not offering good information for patients (and providors who reffered them), resulting in many questions over email and phone. The growing team needed something that would serve new and existing patients while reducing the burden on staff.
The client had specific a request:
Create a custom, white-label experience using existing third party tools to allow patients to manage scheduling, billing, and more from within the Bothell Psychiatric site.
The Team
Our freelance team of three consisted of a project manager, developer, and designer, working closely over several months to deliver the website.
What I did
Delivered a set of responsive designs that met stakeholder needs within the project budget
Worked closely with team and client, allowing me to pivot and create effective designs when faced with challenges
Why I was successful
Effectively communicated design decisions and found a compromise that the client was happy with
Collaborated with PM and Dev to identify challenges and create feasible solutions within constraints
Focused on simple, useful content that addressed many common questions from new patients and providors
Research and preparation
A limited budget meant rapid and minimal research. However, in addition to ensuring we could meet stakeholder requirements, the features requested by the client warranted a better understanding of user needs. I did as much research as possible to design a useful product.
Based on the client's brief, I had a number of questions I wanted to answer:
What do patients need to feel confident when choosing mental health providors?
How can a website support existing patients to make continued care easy?
What do providors look for when they refer their patients to psychiatric services?
How are other providors addressing these questions?
Heuristic Evaluation
I began my work with a quick evaluation of the old website to identified several main areas to improve:
Content should be relevant and clear
Much of the site content was in long paragraph form and overly wordy making it hard to skim and read
Language was technical and full of jargon, making comprehension difficult with an unapproachable tone
Site architecture should support company goals
There was no logical structure to the site, making it hard to find specific information
After review of the site, it was still unclear what exactly the practice did for patients and what their purpose was
Industry Analysis
An analysis of the field of psychiatry along with other psychiatric providors helped me get an understanding what the site might need to be competetive and stand apart from other providors.
Several interesting findings from my analysis:
Mental health services are in high demand and there are more people seeking care than there are providors
Patients are cautious in seeking care given the vulnerability required in working with a psychiatric providor
Many providors websites were sparse in information and unapproachable, others had no web presence at all
Patients of higher incomes (such as Bothell's clients) often do research and have freedom to choose providors
Final sitemap outlining the structure
Late stage wireframes after several iterations
I ran a prioritization session to help our team focus on the right features
Stakeholder Interviews
I interviewed Dr. Devney and his staff and learned many important insights, such as:
Most new patients are reffered to Bothell Psychiatric by their primary care providors
Adolescent and adult care is handled differently, from treatment to insurance
Lack of online info and manual processes created burden for admin staff and confusion for patients
Scheduling and billing were done with two different third party systems, each of which the client wanted to make patient facing to enhance the experience
- Patients asking about appointment availability was the most frequent reason for email and calls
Focus areas
Using all of this information, I worked with the developer to find ways to deliver the features the client had requested.
We decided to focus on the following:
Simple and relevant
Only add what's needed to provide the essential details that help site users
Put patients at ease
Create a brand image that uses tone and visuals to convey care and compassion
Make managing care easy
Provide patients with more online access to forms, billing, and scheduling tools
Capture new providors
Showcase expertise and patient outcomes to gain primary providors trust
Third party tools presented challenges
Practice Mate (used for billing) and Practice Fusion (used for scheduling) are separate third party tools. Each offers integration and customization through an API. The client wanted a white-label experience with these tools built into their site with a single patient login, hoping this would let patients manage billing, scheduling, and complete pre-visit forms.
During initial project scoping, the project manager had thought the request was possible to meet within the budget. During my research I had some concerns about feasibility due to the amount of customization and HIPAA privacy considerations for software, an area no one involved had expertise.
At this point, we brought the developer in to discuss the situation. It became clear that my concerns around feasibility were valid. The client would either need to drastically increase budget or we'd need to provide an alternative that could work for them.
We met with the client and presented the issue. While they were dissapointed they would not be able to afford the original site they wanted, they understood the situation and were hopeful we'd be able to find some good alternatives.
Finding alternative solutions
I ran a prioritization session with the team to brainstrom different ways to approach the client requests. Each of us voted on features based on feasibility and importance. Knowing we would need to scale back everything from the inital scope, we settled on several changes:
Sitewide - No patient portal or account login
Patient billing - Use a simple cta that redirected to the third party login
Patient Scheduling - Allow patients to see appointment availability on the site using the API, with a redirect to the third party tool for booking. This was one of the biggest admin burdens - communicating back and forth with patients to find appointment times.
Patient Forms - Embed patient forms into the website for download, and patients can fill out and return them via Bothell's secure email
The use of redirects and secure email form submission meant many of the clients requests could be met, but without the seamless white-label experience they hoped for. Because no patient information within the Bothell Psychiatric site, concerns around HIPAA requirements were avoided
Build and test
To test the functionality of the scheduling tool, I built a high-fidelity prototype using Figma components with variants and tested it with my team and the client. High fidelity was used to help the client see what the end product might look like, ensuring they were bought in to the idea.
Testing helped address ways to increase functionality and reduce the time to schedule an appointment, an especially important consideration because the tool ultimately redirects the patient to a third party for the actual appointment booking.
Results
The end result was a bit different from what Bothell Psychiatric originally envisioned, but after they understood the true cost of developing their perfect website, they were happy with a site that would meet patient needs and reduce the burden on staff.
The decision to pivot and use simple redirects for billing and scheduling, while giving patients easy access to appointment availability and forms was a practical and effective compromise to keep their project within budget and on time.
Additional work that was completed included:
- Branding and logo design
- Mission statement and values
- Copywriting with content and tone/voice considerations
The final designs resulted in a simple but effective site with an easy way for patients to manage many part of their care and make it just a little bit easier for people to get the help they need.
As my contract work came to a close, I prepared a handoff package for the developer in Zeplin with style guides and annotations.
Takeaways
There were some important lessons learned during this project. Helping a client understand what is possible for a website means setting expectations early. The Bothell Psychiatric team was very busy focusing on patient care, so communicating back and forth was challenging. In the future, if possible, I would plan to bring a developer onboard earlier to help provide clarity on feasibility within budget.
Additionally, if I'd had more time and resources I would have:
- Conducted more research with patients and providors to be sure we new what end users needed - including usability testing of the prototype
- Explored different tools and third party integrations that might better meet client needs