HEALTHCARE SERVICE DESIGN
Designing a system of cohesive features for a recovery program.
CHALLENGE
METHODOLOGY
SOLUTION
Minnesota has recently updated state law to allow customers to choose their own recovery programs, which has impacted the current process of intake for local treatment programs to reach out to customers directly and provide the public with direct access to resources.
Our client, Northstar Behavioral Health aims to be a leader in offering clinical assessments to individuals interested in a recovery journey. They would like to harness web traffic to help rapidly place individuals into the appropriate treatment plans, improve customer service and reputation, and grow their system of care.
Research Included: stakeholder interviews, secondary research of conventions and competitor analysis, personas, a touchpoint tour map, and prototyping.
Our team was inspired by the name and mission of Northstar Behavioral Health. As a guiding light in the community, we recommended that Northstar advance the usability of their key touchpoints: website, partnerships, and community engagement. We prototyped these recommendations and developed an additional prototype concept for a behavioral health mobile application that offers cutting-edge care and connection for individuals on any step of the recovery journey. My focus on this project was the creation of the website wireframes and a digital style guide for the website and mobile app. I also worked on storyboarding our final presentation and creating the presentation deck.
Role: UX Researcher & Designer | Deliverables: Prototype, Client Presentation, Research & Design Artifacts
METHODS
1 Competitive Audit
2 Stakeholder Interview
3 Secondary Research
4 Affinity Diagramming
5 Touchpoint Map
6 Rapid Prototyping
7 Personas
8 Site Maps
9 Storyboards
10 Annotated Wireframes
ATTRIBUTIONS
• Logo: Northstar Behavior Health
• Typeface: Open Sans
• Icons: Material Design, Noun Project,
Material Design, IconScout
• Style Guide Template: Figma
• Website Template: Trafalgar
• Illustrations: Humaaans
Redesign Homepage
I focused on the design, style guide, and layout for the website and app design. You can view the home page, “Start Treatment” page, and “Assessment” page through the prototype, as well as the “App Download” page which would connect NBH web page visitors with a direct way to access the NBH app.
PROJECT REFLECTION
This was my first experience working on a team project. Our group brainstorming and synthesis sessions were incredibly inspiring and it really helped me to see the value in collaborative ideation and wireframing. I enjoyed creating both the branding style guide and prototyped designs for the web experiences: a welcoming and inclusive homepage design that focused on immediate care, assessments, and patient needs and a mobile app that focused on ongoing care and behavioral training for an individual at any step in their recovery journey.
AHA Moment
There was an especially inspiring moment that occurred when our team was considered how we wanted to tell the story of Northstar's mission. Northstar wants to be a leader in care standards, a beacon of hope, and to make care accessible at any point in recovery. It was here that I realized what we really considering was a connected system, or constellation, of care. We used this ‘guiding light’ and ‘constellation of care’ inspiration to build a system of touchpoints meant to support individuals at any step in their recovery journey. This astronomy theme also helped us to develop the project visuals.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Creating a Constellation of Care:
A design system focused on growing and connecting key touchpoints to create a comprehensive system of recovery care and resources.
Northstar Behavioral Health is a recovery program that offers treatment facilities, assessments, counseling, resources, and more. They are an important solution for low-cost recovery care in Minnesota and want to be the leader in providing assessments. After researching the space and the client’s needs, we learned that Northstar currently drives about 90% of their online traffic from web referrals that lead to their website. I focused my attention on maximizing that web traffic by updating the usability and look and feel of the current website, highlighting the assessment feature, and adding considerations for how the Northstar site connected to other touchpoints.
Northstar is interested in developing its digital community resources and wants to find a way to help individuals who may have Stimulant Use Disorder before they need treatment or are ready for an assessment. Northstar was interested in hearing recommendations for helping individuals who were in treatment or out of treatment connect digitally. With this in mind, my design team developed a mobile app that offered behavioral health training and tracking, resources, mentorship group, and peer community forums. This app’s features are tailored to be valuable at any step of recovery and could be included within Northstar’s comprehensive treatment plan. In the future, Northstar wants to develop an application where they could begin curating their own recovery content: this application could grow to add live telehealth counseling and classes in its next iteration.
Our team also incorporated storyboards, screen flows, and site maps to illustrate how the app could grow and be incorporated into Northstar’s non-digital community outreach and partnership programs.
Features Included:
Program Website
Prototype with Updated Look & Feel
Screens with Step by Step Guidance
Recommendations for Usability & Next Steps
Prototype for Connecting to the Mobile Application
Digital Style Guide
Recovery Application
Navigation Map
Onboarding Flow
Prototypes of Key Features: Menu, Notifications, Group Chat, Check-in, Journey Progress, Community Forum, Resource Connecters
Additional Community Engagement
Storyboards to describe Non-Digital Community Engagements and how they lead to digital touchpoints.
Adding a resource hub to incorporate and invite partnerships to the digital space and Northstar Constellation of Care.
These features were compiled in a Recommendations Report and Presented to Our Clients.
My Role: I focused on project research, ideation, and design. My personal client deliverables were the website components: the style guide and key website screens.
I also created the icons and illustrations for the application as well as assisting in wireframing the application screens.
In addition to designing the website wireframes and prototypes, I also created worked to develop the personas, compiled secondary research, created a high-level site map of the current site, ran an informal competitor analysis, created the template for our presentation and recommendations report, designed mock-ups of our prototypes, storyboarded out the length and flow of our presentation, develop the style guide, and created a background illustration for the app.
Website Design Introduction
Website Screens: Landing Page Views
Website Screens: Next Steps
Website Screens: App Connecter
Website Screens: Next Steps
Website: Landing Page with Annotation
Website: Start Treatment
App Connecter
Website: Asessment
Digital Style Guide for App & Website
Website on iPad
STRATEGY STATEMENT
Our team’s strategy:
“All user experience touchpoints for Northstar Behavioral Health will help individuals who are interested in their recovery journey to feel supported through a comprehensive wellness program so that they are able to become and/or remain engaged and empowered throughout the said journey.
We will do this by focusing on direct access to recovery resources and community building.
As a result, we hope to see improved personal outcomes and a measurable increase in the utilization of Northstar's resources.”
KEY AUDIENCE
• Primary Audience: Individuals experiencing Stimulant Use Disorder or Opioid Use Disorder
• Anyone within the Northstar network of care such as partners, staff, and supports of the primary audience.
THE METHODOLOGY
RESEARCH
STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEW: Current features and goals were evaluated through a competitive audit and a stakeholder interview.
SECONDARY RESEARCH: We conducted secondary research to better understand the process, pre-existing conventions, and developing trends of recovery programs.
TOUCHPOINT MAP: We mapped the current touchpoints within the Northstar ecosystem to understand all of the ways they currently connect with customers, understand their current outreach system, and identify potential opportunities to further those connections.
PERSONAS: We developed five simple personas to base our website designs around. Our focus was based on four individuals from different phases of the recovery journey and one individual who may be using the system as a partner looking to help others.
FINDINGS
Findings were summarized in this Touch Point Map & Persona Outline
The Northstar Constellation of Care: How Individuals Connect with the Northstar Healthcare System.
We used simple role personas to try to make sure we were considering the needs of Northstar’s potential digital audience. Our app and website are meant to support individuals at any stage in their recovery journey.
RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT | PROCESS PHOTOS
Synthesis: Our research team used Invision’s collaborative whiteboard tool for a lot of primary ideation and research synthesis. We used also used a collaborative Figma file to create our designs together.
RECOMMENDATIONS | ANNOTATED WIREFRAMES & REPORT
Annotated Wireframes were created and presented to the client.
View the full report here including our team’s website design, app design, and information on advancing community engagement through touchpoint design:
Presentation Role: Storyboarding, Presentation Layout, Style Guide, and Prototype
CLIENT PRESENTATION
View the remote client presentation here:
Click on the video above to view the client presentation or click here to view the pdf.
NEXT STEPS
Prototypes Ready for Usability Testing
Our team worked to understand the opportunity space within Northstar’s full constellation of care. In our report, we offered recommendations for a website update, application build, and how these services might connect together throughout a user’s recovery journey. We prototyped the features for an initial phase. These features are ready for the first round of usability testing. We recommend that Northstar bring in people to test these concepts before, during, and after development to ensure that each feature is designed to best fit their needs and offers a positive experience for their customers, staff, and partnerships.
