EYE 2 EYE

Designing a patient self referral portal

Working with an eye care provider to streamline the process of accessing urgent acute eye care. The goal was to design a well-structured and clearly signposted system, so patients can request and receive timely assistance.

My Role

Product Designer

Timeline

3 weeks

Tools

Figma/Figjam

The Problem

How can we help educate patients on how they can access critical eye care?

Eye2Eye, a Maidstone-based opticians offering both routine and acute ophthalmology services, faced the challenge of raising patient awareness about the self-referral option and ensuring that contact information is easily accessible, making it difficult for patients to navigate their services without GP involvement.

Old experience

Addressing these challenges require a user-friendly solution that streamlines the self-referral process for patients with visual impairments, with accessibility as a central focus of the design.

The Results

A faster, clearer path to care

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Streamlined Self-Referral Process

Reduced the steps required for patients to self-refer for acute eye care.

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Improved User Navigation

Ensuring users can quickly locate and access the self-referral system, minimising confusion and frustration.

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Increased Awareness of Self-Referral

Produced a clear and accessible self-referral pathway.

The Process

Simplifying the path to receiving urgent eye-care

In just three weeks, I conducted user research to identify pain points, defined the patient journey with a clear problem statement, designed low-fidelity wireframes to streamline the self-referral process, and tested the prototype to improve navigation and accessibility.

Stakeholder interview

Identifying the business goals

From the stakeholder discussion, the client highlighted significant confusion from patients in the existing referral pathways and emphasised the need to streamline the process for acute cases to encourage self-referrals directly to Eye2Eye.

Current Website

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The business goals

  • Drive more patients to self refer to increase referral rates

  • Less resources allocated to phone lines

  • Improve customer satisfaction

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The current solution

  • Only phone number visible on the website

  • No option to self refer via a form

  • No clear self-referral section on the website

User Research

How do people currently access urgent care?

To understand how people access urgent but not life threatening care, I surveyed 24 individuals and uncovered three key insights:

GP

Emergency Services

Private

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58% relied on emergency services

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29% trusted their GP for urgent care needs.

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Only 8% were aware of the self-referral option

User Interviews

β€œI feel like I’m not heard when I’m explaining my issues to my GP”

To dive deeper into user behaviour, I conducted interviews guided by three primary research goals:

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Understanding the current process

  • Explored users’ most recent experiences accessing urgent but non-life-threatening healthcare.

  • Uncovered a tendency to rely on familiar but slower routes, like GPs, even for acute eye issues.

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Understanding user needs

  • Discovered that users often feel dismissed by healthcare workers, frustrated with long wait times, and unsure if their issue warrants urgent care.

  • Highlighted the emotional and logistical challenges faced when trying to access appropriate care.

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Aligning business goals with user needs

Identified a significant gap between user expectations and current care pathways.

Users expressed a desire for clear, direct, and easily accessible solutions for urgent eye care, reinforcing the need for a streamlined self-referral system.

Competitor Analysis

Drawing motivation from traditional procedures

I conducted a review of competitors to draw inspiration and understand current industry practices in facilitating access to eye care services.

πŸ”‘ Key Takeaways

  • Clear and direct calls-to-action

  • Easy and immediate access to contact information

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Newmedica

  • NHS branding

  • Referral process clearly signposted

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Circle Health Group

  • Clear and simple call to action

  • Can easily locate contact information

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Moorfields Eye Hospital

  • Clear NHS branding

  • Similar design to NHS government website

Affinity Mapping

Visualising the research findings

I used affinity mapping to organise insights gathered from user interviews, uncovering key themes and patterns including:

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Feeling dismissed

Users often feel unheard or overlooked by healthcare workers, leading to dissatisfaction and mistrust.

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Frustration with Inadequate Services

Users felt the care they received was insufficient to address their needs, compounding their stress and dissatisfaction.

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Dislike for Long Wait Times

Long delays in accessing care were a common frustration, especially for urgent issues.

User persona

Meet Rosie, a busy working professional

The persona was created to humanise the user experience, helping to visualise the challenges, emotions, and needs of patients seeking urgent eye care. Rosie encapsulates the research findings and allowed me to anchor the solution to meet her needs.

Quick facts

  • Struggles to balance work and life

  • Never had urgent health problem

  • Recently registered with a new GP

  • Lives with flatmate

β€œThe wait times in between appointments was extremely frustrating watching my condition worsen”

Insights

  • Wants to live a healthy life and avoid painful, costly health problems

  • Limited personal time, so she wants urgent healthcare services to take up less of her time

  • Wants to feel valued and listened to when discussing her health with a professional

Opportunities

  • Reduce friction points in current healthcare processes

  • Increase awareness of which avenue to go to to seek appropriate help in an urgent healthcare situation

  • Improve communication between healthcare workers and patients

Experience Map

Mapping the Patient Journey to Identify Pain Points

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Through conducting a collaborative workshop with the user base, we created an experience map, capturing the journey of patients seeking urgent eye care. Together, we outlined the current user experience, highlighting the most frustrating pain points.

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This process also helped identify key opportunities for improvement, such as clearer triaging, empathetic communication, and streamlined pathways to care.

Defining the problem

Consolidating the research

Research showed that patients with acute eye problems feel dismissed, face long wait times, and are often unaware of self-referral options, causing unnecessary distress. With only 8% aware of self-referral, clearer communication and streamlined access became essential. This led to the following problem statement and hypothesis.

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Problem Statement

Patients with acute eye problems often struggle to access the correct and timely urgent care, leading to unnecessary physical and mental distress.

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Hypothesis

By redesigning the Eye2Eye website to clearly highlight the self-referral process for acute eye problems, we can increase awareness and usage of this service. I will know this is true when we observe higher rates of self-referral and improved patient satisfaction.

Ideation

Rapid Ideation to explore solutions

To generate potential solutions quickly and efficiently, I used the Crazy 8s ideation technique. This approach allowed me to brainstorm a wide range of ideas within a short time frame, focusing on addressing the core problem of improving self-referral awareness and access.

Low-fidelity wireframes

Starting with paper to shape ideas

I began with paper wireframes to quickly visualise and contextualise my ideas in a flexible and low-fidelity format. This approach allowed me to experiment with layouts, test initial concepts, and establish a loose flow for the self-referral process before moving on to a more defined user flow and detailed designs.

User flows

Mapping the self-referral user flow

I broke down the user flow into three distinct steps, creating user flows that aligned with customers’ mental models of how they might seek help. These flows represented three scenarios:

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A user with a very urgent and severe eye problem

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A user with an urgent but not life-threatening issue

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A user with a non-urgent eye problem

Design system

Establishing Clear and Trustworthy Medical Branding

Through competitor analysis and research into NHS branding, I developed a simple design system that embodies clarity, trust, and professionalism, ensuring alignment with user expectations for medical services.

Design system

#0060BE

#3A5B76

#C90000

Typography

Title - Inter Bold

H1 - Inter Medium

H2 - Inter Bold

Body - Inter Regular

Usability Testing

Iteration Through User Feedback

During usability testing, I identified key areas for improvement and made targeted changes to enhance the user experience:

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Condensed text

Streamlined content to support quick scanning and better accessibility for users in urgent situations.

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Clearer copy

Simplified language to remove jargon and make the process easier to understand.

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Content reorder

Adjusted the information hierarchy to guide users directly to the contact information and self-referral form.

High fidelity designs

Optimised Designs for Desktop

These are the final, polished designs for the self-referral process on the Eye2Eye website, optimised for web accessibility and user experience.

Results

From waiting months to referral in minutes

The final designs align with Eye2Eye’s business goals by improving self-referral awareness, enhancing accessibility, and reducing reliance on GP involvement.

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Streamlined self-referral process

The high-fidelity designs significantly reduced the number of steps needed for users to self-refer, ensuring a faster and less frustrating experience.

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Improved clarity and navigation

Changes to content hierarchy and copywriting provided users with a clearer pathway to self-referral, making the process more accessible and intuitive.

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Increased awareness potential

The redesign prominently showcased the self-referral option, addressing the previously low awareness rate of 8% revealed during research.

Reflection & Next steps

If I had more time...

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Redesign the rest of the website to improve navigation and ensure a consistent user experience

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Add educational sections to inform customers about self-referral

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Improve the triaging system for greater efficiency and user satisfaction

Let’s connect! ✨

sadafwaseeq@hotmail.co.uk