The MyPathway patient app had implemented a solution for patients to enter regular readings so they could be remotely monitored by their clinicians. Unfortunately the MVP solution used a floating action button (FAB), a component from the ionic framework the app had been built with. The NHS now wanted to increase the number of inputs and readings available for patients to input, however the design/layout of the FAB buttons didn’t allow this to work in an elegant way.
Each time an additional data type was added the buttons had to move further away from the initial button resulting in a poor user experience and working against Fitt’s Law I tried many variations of how this could be ‘tweaked’ but there was no solution that was going to work. I was also aware of other features on the road map that were going to be added that would need UI solutions within the product and this implementation just wasn’t going to be scalable.
Having interviewed patients that were using this feature on the app I knew they wanted to be alerted when their readings were due and they wanted to have guidance when inputing their readings. There was no confirmation that the readings had been recorded or error messages if an incorrect reading had been input.
I ran a design sprints to quickly find solutions not only to the ‘patient data inputs’ but also the wider UX & UI issues I could see facing the product in the future. Having completed the design sprints I created a prototype that incorporated a solution for the ‘patient data inputs’ but also a showed how other product features (Goals & Appointments) could be included in the updated user interface elegantly.
You can watch the prototype opposite by clicking the play button.
This project not only solved the problem of the increasing number of patient data inputs, but also kick started a wider understanding in the business of the value of design and the future vision of the product.
Off the back of this piece of work I was able to educate others about the value of a ‘North Star’ vision. The technical teams started to amend their roadmaps to incorporate the work needed to rebuild the user interface and start building a design system or pattern library that would allow a single source of truth for the presentation layer of product.