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RE-IMAGINING THE EMERGENCY ROOM WAITING EXPERIENCE

UX Case Study

team:   Pegah Sargolzaei,Kay Abushara,                        Twinkle Panchal, Sunidhi Anand

Roles:  User Research & User Testing

                   Wire-framing & Prototyping

Why I started this project?

The emergency department offers an essential service to the patients, providing occasional care and treatment to people who are injured or require emergency care for other illnesses. Each year, there are over 5 million patients visiting Ontario’s emergency departments. ER departments are sometimes used as a substitute to primary care providers. This usually happens when people have no access to a family doctor or nurse practitioner. Largely, about 90% of patients who visit Ontario’s ER departments are discharged after receiving care, with only about 10 % permitted to hospitals. Therefore, ER departments get crowded easily creating long waiting times for patients. Wait time in emergency department is a huge issue, which is inconvenient for both the hospitals and the patients.

 

Problem statement:

When a patient comes to the emergency room at the hospital,

their care is prioritized based on the severity of the patient’s

condition and the other patients who are already in the waiting

room. As a result, wait times for a given patient are difficult to

predict.

Patients and their families may spend hours waiting to be seen

and treated by a doctor or another health care professional.

Design Process:

INSPIRATION

SYNTHESIS

IDEATION

PROTOTYPE

Primary research

Secondary research

Quotes and insights

Creating personas

Empathy map

Coming up with new ideas,

Prioritizing ideas

Sketches

Lo-fi wireframes

Hi-fi wireframes

Empathy map

User interview:

Goal:    we did interview with different types of                                         people, men and women in different range of                             ages.

                     The common answer was bringing the sense of                         convenience and time-management into                                     emergency waiting room experience. 

Some of the question we asked:

Have you had the experience of refer to ER during these few months?

How did you go to ER?

How long did it take to be visited by doctor?

How satisfied you are?

...

'Unoccupied time feels longer than occupied time.'

'Unexplained wait times are longer than explained waits.'

'The more valuable the service, the longer the customer will wait.'

Quotes:

'Anxiety makes waits seem longer.'

Summer Walker

Age: 26

Creative director

1

Consistent

Punctual

Smartphone user

About:   Summer Walker is a creative director at Pixar                              where she manages a team of designers. Due to                          her busy schedule it's been hard for her to get                              her regular medical checkup. She is planning on                          starting a family in the near future.  She enjoys                            doing cardio and participating in boxing classes.                        However; With her busy schedule she finds                                    herself getting stressed and anxious very easily.                        She wants to avoid adding more stress into her                            life. 

Pain-point:   Seeing a doctor is  time consuming.

                                She doesn’t know how much time she will

                                spend in the hospital. She understands the                                                  importance of seeing a doctor on time and

                                taking medication when needed, however;

                                she is still waiting to get assigned to a

                                family doctor.

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Russel Pit

Age: 32

Data scientist

Immigrant

2

Professional

Calm

Generous

About:   Russel is a data scientist working at amazon. He                        has immigrated from Russia to Toronto with his                          family. 

                      Recently he has pain in his right shoulder and he                        visited his family doctor thrice where his doctor                          gave him prescription. Now, his shoulder pain                              has increased and two of his fingers are numb.                           So, he has been referred to ER.

Pain-point:    He has taken off from his work and he

                                has been waiting for 2 hours.

                               There is no source of entertainment, no

                               Wifi and no charging point. 

                               He wished to carry a book.

Empathy map:

Secondary research:

Overview:

Based on some secondary research on existing devices for improving the experience in ER, we recognized few features as a crucial points in these application,

  • Searching for nearest ER

  • Timer, how long should patients wait

  • Determining the type of injury or disease for prioritizing.

Outcome:

we found that these application had a lot of functional clutter, where the users only needed some of those features that were offered.

 

In addition, since we considered elderly people in our research as patients who might refer to ER in urgent situations, we found it out for them to use application. The reason is that they are not familiar with technology, and they prefer to find someone to accompany them and don't leave them alone in the process of visiting in ER. 

Opportunity:

How might we improve the experience for patients and ED providers in ER?

Grouping ideas:

Navigation

waiting time

sharing medical

records

Directing to the doctor room quickly

Finding cafeteria and services

Managing the time to

avoid wasting time

Showing the time left

Having access to previous medical records

Ability to share it with doctor digitally

entertainment

Have fun during waiting time

Equipping the waiting room to entertaining facilities

Prioritization:

The following prioritization grid is how we filtered out the relevant features.

Storyboard:

From our primary research, we formulated what might be certain scenarios where our users could benefit from our solution.

These scenarios are depicted in our storyboards.

We gain a lot of insight and try to put ourselves into their shoes.

1

Russel was working at his office that felt pain on his stomach.

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2

He experienced a sense of confusion to decide to call 911 or ask for help from his colleague

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3

After a long time he spent on deciding to go to ER with his friend's help or going by himself, he made a decision and took a bus.

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4

He was looking for the nearest ER with application.

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5

When he arrived ER, at first, he couldn't find his way, there was no specific sign to direct him.

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6

He found Robots which are used to direct the patients, accompany them during the process of treatment, and has already all the information of patient to export to doctor.

Sketches:

Most important sketches of the screens which are appeared on the robot for facilitating the process of treatment for patients.

Home page:

Patients and people who accompany them have options in order to facilitate the process of treatment.They can go through each step which is selected, including Registration, Navigation, and WiFi.

Navigation:

Showing the steps which should be taken in the process of treatment in ER experience.

Try to make it more clear for patients and accelerate the process.

Waiting time:

approximate time that patients have to wait to be visited by a doctor in order to estimate how long does it take to wait in ER.

Registration:

Patients have three options to enter, Login, Sign up, MyChart account, to go through the other step.

Appointment:

Access to the availability of doctors in order to make an appointment for a certain time.

History reports:

Doctors and patients will have access to their reports, including previous prescription, tests, so they don't need physical reports, instead they can have access to the digital one.

Low-fidelity Wire-frames:

the significant features of this robot.

Home Page

Registration Page

Navigation Page 1

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Navigation Page 2

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Guideline Page

Connecting to WiFi

Making appointment Page

Estimated Waiting Time

All Patient's Reports

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