Tag Archives: travel sheet

UX Deliverables: card sort

Jennifer Blatz UX design is using a card sort to organize the taxonomy of a virtual travel sheet.
Card sorting can be used for more things than just a website’s navigation. This card sort was done with Post-it notes in person with the user.

Cards sorts can make many forms. They can be low tech with index cards or Post-it notes. Or they can be a higher fidelity done on a website or with other card sorting software on the computer.

Jennifer Blatz UX design card sort of taxonomy and information architecture.
An online card sort can be performed with remote users.

 

If you have access to users in person, you can use a physical card sort. With this, you can use index cards or Post-it notes to have the user organize the items written on the card in to more general categories. If you do not have the opportunity to to meet the user in person, it’s ok to use a remote card sorting service or software (second image above) to do a card sort.

The major things that a card sort is used to accomplish is:

  • It is cheap and easy to do. Yes it takes a bit of time to create one card for each topic and make sure that all assets are covered. But once that is done, all you need to do is hand the cards to the user and have them organize them. Take a picture of the results with your phone or a digital camera and save for analysis.
  • It is user centric. It truly is from the viewpoint of the user since the user is the one organizing the cards in the best way they see fit.
  • It can be done in person or remotely. As shown in the images above, card sorting can be performed in a variety of ways.
  • It is a valuable and reputable source for gathering information. Car sorting and taxonomy have been used in a variety of ways for years. And if done correctly, it really works!
  • It can also help create labels and navigation titles. If you leave the card sorting open (without providing categories for the user to organize the cards) you can have the user not only group like items, but give them intuitive titles as well.
  • It provides insight in to the user’s thoughts. If you are able to talk with the user as they organize the cards, you get great insight as to WHY they are organizing the cards in certain ways. This helps you get sone context as the why and how the user is grouping like items.

Don’t be afraid to perform your own cart sorting exercise to help organization for your website or app. Feel free to leave comments and share your experience with your own card sort.

 

UX Deliverables: competitive analysis

Jennifer Blatz UX design researches competitive software for the virtual travel sheet.
Performing a competitive analysis can help you in your own design project.

One of the first steps I take in the discovery process of a new project is to get a better feel for what the competition is doing. Why would we care what the compassion is already doing for the same feature or app? Oh there are so many good reasons.

Why do a competitive analysis?

  • So you know how the major competition in your software, product or digital space is handling a similar feature
  • Understand where your product stands in reference to its competition
  • Idea generation on how to solve various usability issues
  • Get an idea of what you can do to gain a competitive edge or make your product better
  • No need to reinvent the wheel. Understand what already exists you you don’t have to start anew.
  • To know what the trends are in your industry and on the web
  • Identify best practices or patterns. Then you can make improvements on what exists.
  • Seeing what already exists can spark new, and even better ideas.

They key benefit of performing a competitve analysis is to identify strengths and areas for improvement. You have to see what already exists out there before you can do this for your own product.

 

UX Deliverables: Journey flow

Along with the requirements needed for the Virtual travel sheet (VTS) , also wrote out the steps a user will go through when working the VTS.

As posted before, we are creating a feature that will help doctors quickly build their medical plan and add items to the order. This feature, called a virtual travel sheet, will greatly increase the doctor’s satisfaction by making data entry easier, fast and perhaps quite pleasant with minimal typing. Doctors are familiar with the concept of a travel sheet. Many of them still use them in their practice still. So integrating a familiar paradigm in to the softwares used in the hospital should be greeted with delight.

Below is the user’s journey of working with the Virtual Travel Sheet for an Outpatient. What is an outpatient? That is a more “typical” type of visit to the doctor. This type of visit does not require the patient to be checked in to the hospital or to stay over night.

User Journey (Outpatient, Plan building)

  • A pet is checked in to the hospital
  • A VTS (virtual travel sheet) is automatically created for today’s visit when the pet is checked in
  • Today’s medical plan is designated on the VTS by the background color and tab at the top being blue.
  • Filters have been applied to the pet.
  • The exam has already been added to the VTS. This is shown by the item highlighted on the VTS and it is listed on today’s medical plan. This is based on the type of appointment that was booked.
  • The Outpatient VTS is selected (from the pulldown)
  • The Dr. will examine the pet and determine what procedures, medications, labs, vaccines or other items should be included in the medical plan.
  • To open the VTS, the user will select a tab (probably located on the right of the screen) that slides from right to left and covers the current screen with the VTS.
  • The user adds items to the medical plan by clicking the item he sees on the VTS one at a time. This selection is instantly highlighted in yellow and is added to the right column under the Medical plan.
  • If a user does not see a lab that he would like to add to his medical plan from the list provided under Labs In House, the user can select the MORE option.

The popup after hitting MORE on a category will:

  1. Give the user the ability to search within this category on the popup
  2. The items from previous VTS screen will be listed within the MORE list in alphabetical order
  3. The ability to select multiple items before closing this window
  4. The items selected will be visible on the TVS as highlighted selections
  • While in the MORE popup screen, the user finds the lab he would like to add to the medical plan on the VTS and selects it. This lab is highlighted, which indicates that it has been selected. When all items are selected, the user then hits the DONE button to add the lab to his VTS
  • The user can use alternative travels sheets, like medications, to add items that are not on the originally displayed VTS. The user selects to the Medication VTS from the pulldown and adds the medication he would like to include with his medical plan.
  • Additional notes can be added to each item in the medical plan. To do this, just double click on the line item and a text field is revealed. Once a note is typed, just navigate away, and it is saved. An orange “N” will indicate that an item has a note.
  • If the user would like to delete an item from the Medical plan, he can hover over the line item and a red “X” will appear to delete the item. The user can also delete the line item by right clicking and selecting the “Delete” option.
  • When all items have been added to the Medical plan, the user can select the “Present estimate” from the pulldown.
  • When the user chooses to present an estimate to a client from the medical plan, another window will slide from the Medical plan column, from the right to the left, covering the VTS selection area. This interactive screen allows the user to:
  1. Show the plan items in a larger font so the customer can review on screen
  2. By checking the “Show Financial” box, it will show the monetary values of each product and summarize the charges
  3. The doctor can add additional notes to this estimate
  4. Instantly get customer approval by checking the box, which will be time stamped
  5. Print estimate for the customer to review and sign if needed
  6. Save this estimate
  7. Update the medical plan if items have been declined by the client
  8. Move items from the medical plan to recommendations if the customer declines an item
  • When the user prints this estimate, it automatically saves the estimate. The plan is also updated if any items have been removed, and therefore sent to the Recommendations section.
  • When an item is declined, it is moved to the recommendation section. On the VTS, the highlight color also changes from yellow to green.

Optional: the user can designate order items to be linked to concerns. This would be done by right clicking on the line item, and selecting the concern from the pull down list.

Optional: the user can create additional estimates for today’s plan or a future visit.

UX Deliverables: Ethnographic observation

Jennifer Blatz UX design performs ethnographic research for the virtual travel sheet.
Understanding how users work in their natural environment will provide great insight in to your research.

Simply put, I love ethnographic research. I mean it when I say that this form of user research is probably the most valuable way to gain insight on your users and your product. And, unfortunately, it is far too often overlooked as time consuming or simply viewed as a waste of time. I could not disagree more!

First let’s define the term. According to Wikipedia, ethnography is:

 The systematic study of people and cultures. It is designed to explore cultural phenomena where the researcher observes society from the point of view of the subject of the study.

So how does this apply to UX and research? By observing your users in their natural habitat, you get exceedingly more information and context about their real world.

The benefits of ethnographic research for me include:

  • You see users use your product in a natural way, not in a fabricated lab setting
  • It provides context to their environment
  • You see things that you would never discover with a phone call or what the suer just tells you
  • You discover that what users say they do, and what they really do can often differ greatly
  • You see first hand the pain points that users are not aware that they have
  • You can observe true behaviors
  • You notice the environmental factors, like interruptions from c0-workers, slowness of equipment, and other physical attributes that affect the user
  • You have the opportunity to ask questions, on the spot, as circumstances arise
  • You can record aspects of the environment by taking photographs and video that could not be done remotely
  • You can establish a better rapport with your users
  • You can observe the entire context of the working environment, across rooms, buildings, people and other circumstances
  • It provides impromptu “bitch sessions” that the user would probably not normally share
  • It allows the user to feel like he/she is being heard
  • It allows you to be an “eye” for the other team members who are not able to view the user’s world
  • It gives the UX designer the best opportunity to really empathize with the user, by seeing how their work or life really is

Hopefully my reasons have given you enough understanding and reasoning to do your own ethnographic research. If you have your stories to share about ethnographic research, please do so in the comments.

 

UX Deliverables: Requirements

I am working on a project that enhancing the EMR (electronic medical records) where I work. We are creating a feature that will help doctors quickly build their medical plan and add items to the order (or list of items to charge the client). This feature, called a virtual travel sheet, will greatly increase the doctor’s satisfaction by making data entry easier, faster and will hopefully create a pleasant data entry experience with minimal typing. Doctors are familiar with the concept of a travel sheet. Many of them still use them in their hospitals to this day. Integrating a familiar paradigm in to the computer software used in the hospital should be greeted with delight.

What does a travel sheet look like? See the image below:
Jennifer Blatz UX Design travel sheet research for medical ERM project
Travel sheets may not be the prettiest thing to look at. But they have a strong function in the medical field when assessing patients.

I am writing the requirements and basic understanding of what the Virtual Travel Sheet (VTS) will do so that developers, QA, project managers and any other team players will understand the scope and expectations of the project. This is just a first draft.

Overview

The virtual travel sheet (VTS) will allow users to:

  • Easily enter items in to the plan without having to type in free text (so easy that it is preferable)
  • Easily enter items in to the plan without knowing any codes
  • Transfer/translate the items in my plan to an order
  • Transfer/translate the items in my plan to an estimate
  • See my plan built in real time
  • Create estimates (treatment plans) for items or services for the future
  • Include exams, vaccines, medications, injections, medical services, lab, imaging, etc.
  • Present items based on type of visit (outpatient, inpatient (hospitalized), boarding/grooming and retail products)
  • Filter out codes that don’t apply to the patient by species, age, weight, sex, altered status)
  • Present active, commonly used items (per hospital) as used per species
  • Allow for search
  • Ability to link to concerns
  • Display recent estimates for this patient

Typical users would be

  • Doctors writing their medical note
  • Technicians entering in items for the doctor in to his/her medical plan
  • Technicians entering in charges to the order

Access

  • Small tab to the right of the screen where user can “side open from left to right” the VTS.
  • This allows the user’s work not to be interrupted.
  • They can slide this open, and add items to today’s Medical plan or create an estimate.
  • All actions will be saved automatically.
  • The user can then just “slide” the window closed again and continue working on the lower/bottom/previous screen they were on before the opened the VTS.

Available travel sheets

  • Outpatient
  • Inpatient
  • Surgery
  • Medications
  • Specialty
  • Boarding & Grooming
  • Retail products

Filters applied to the VTS (can be turned off on the patient by the user)

  • Species
  • Sex
  • Age
  • Weight
  • Altered (y/n)
  • CareClub enrollment

The travel sheet will provide the user a condensed listing of codes based on

  • Filters that have automatically been applied
  • Available codes/catalog items for that hospital
  • Most commonly used codes by VCA
  • Most commonly used codes by that hospital
  • User favorites (second iteration)
  • Templates applied to plan

Researching new topics: Medical travel sheet

Travel sheet UX research and discovery by Jennifer Blatz
Master lists like this can help people remember conditions they might otherwise forget in a medical examination.

Travel sheets are a traditional medical document used by doctors as a sort of a check list of conditions. It’s a quick way to mark items that a patient may or may not have.

What do I know about medical exam travel sheets? Absolutely nothing! But that is a great start for any UX Designer. You don’t have to be an expert on your subject so start researching. In fact, the less you know can work to your advantage. Approaching a topic from a completely new and innocent perspective allows you to empathize how someone else who is new to the subject will be introduced. You have fresh eyes, less bias and a lack of knowledge to jump ahead of yourself.

So if you don’t know a lot about a topic then get started on learning. Use the web to research what others have said on the same topic. I don’t have to tell you the wealth of resources there are online. Also, talk to your stakeholders and clients to learn from they. they know their subject, and they should not be afraid to share this valuable information with you.

Jennifer Blatz UX Design travel sheet research for medical ERM project
Travel sheets may not be the prettiest thing to look at. But they have a strong function in the medical field when assessing patients.