THE CHALLENGE
This project was conducted as a part of the MDEI course “User Experience Design Fundamentals and User Experience Research.” We conducted the research in a team of 4 students, and joined with a second team of 4 when building a list of recommendations and presenting. It was done in partnership with St Mary’s Hospital in Kitchener.
The purpose was to explore improvement to the hospital’s emergency room wait times, with emphasis on patients who need to be admitted.
THE APPROACH
Our research for this project focused on observation, third-party research, interviews, and user journeys. We visited the hospital three times, and on each visit were given insight into the process of receiving a patient in the emergency room, admitting the patient to the hospital, and overseeing the patient’s care and recovery. Our final visit included a tour of the relevant parts of the hospital.
To try to better understand the patients and their experience, we created an extreme user persona and participated in a user journey outlining activity. During that activity we looked at the entire patient experience, from getting injured to being discharged and, combined with some of the results of our meetings with hospital staff, we identified the sticking point as not the place where the effects were seen (the emergency room) but farther down the journey (the patient discharge process).
THE RESULTS
Based on our research we were able to compile a list of recommendations for the hospital to implement. These included ways to improve the actual wait-time length, the perceived wait-time length, and the overall experience a patient has while waiting. Some concept were immediately implementable, and some included large scale remodelling.
We presented these ideas to the representatives from the hospital, with a positive reception.
@sarahklassen proposing some activities for patients while waiting #mdeiUX #UX pic.twitter.com/ibvY1nY3Op
— karin schmidlin (@k_arin) April 2, 2015