WebMD is the leading source of health information online today. As a digital media company reinventing itself as a health technology company, their long-term goal is to de-silo patients and providers through patient empowerment and connectivity made possible by technology. The client's brief challenged our team to increase user acquisition and retention on WebMD as well as make it easier for users to find and use information from their massive collection of content.
Our hypothesis was that health information seekers have a pattern of behavior that depends on the type of information they are searching for and their motivations for searching.
We set out the following learning objectives for our research:
Surveys We conducted 50 online surveys to test intitial hypotheses and screen for interviews.
User Interviews We conducted 13 interviews with patients and healthcare professionals.
Literature Review Read 5+ scholarly articles about information seeking behavior and health messaging.
Content Audit We conducted an audit of the WebMD website to understand their current content strategy.
Competitive and Comparative Analysis We analyzed 5 products that fall into health information and technology.
Themes arose in our research that took the form of personas, journey maps, and design principles that could serve as a guide for how to design.
Empowerment: Enable information seekers to find and collect information that leads to insights they know how to act on.
Guidance: De-scatter the search by only providing the most relevant information first but keep ways to access further content easily accessible. Connection: Recognize that WebMD is one part of someone’s personal health management ecosystem and can act as a bridge to their health care provider. Clarity: Be clear about types of information and source of information because it allows users to assess and use the information for their specific context. Accuracy: Align with healthcare professionals’ approach by using accurate argumentation (meaning that the strength of claim always matches strength of evidence). Balanced: Give viewpoints due weight (rather than equal weight) which means gain-based messaging should be a focus of much of the content.
We jumped into the ideation process by rapidly sketching possible solutions to a set of questions we posed: How might we support good research habits of looking at multiple sources? How might we provide a balance of guidance and flexibility for their different search needs? How might we align health information that people find on WebMD with healthcare professionals’ approaches?
Sketching We ideated through cycles of sketching and critiquing and more sketching.
Scenarios and User Flows We created three main scenarios based off of our personas.
Usability Testing Conducted a total of 8 usability tests using paper and digital prototypes.
Uncertainty to Actionable Insight: With the WebMD app, Akash is now able to search for and collect information about his symptoms, determine the severity of his symptoms, and take action by calling a heath-line.
Invested in using WebMD: Akash has saved information in the app and will come back to re-engage with that information whether it is at a doctor visit, when seeking advice from his mom, or the next time he experiences ringing in his ears.
Mobile Prototype
CREDITS: Sign Up by Arslan Shahid, Text wrap by Pham Thi Dieu Linh, Resume created by Nicholas Menghini, Scribble created by Emily Haasch, Social Network and Atom created by Creative Stall, People created by Castor and Pollux, iPhone created by Edward Boatman, and Apple Watch created by Anusha Narvekar are from the Noun Project.