END-TO-END DESIGN FOR AN APP TO HELP WITH MEDICAL BILLS
RESEARCH | SYNTHESIS | PROJECT STRATEGY | PROTOTYPE + TEST | UI DESIGN
MY ROLE: Lead designer and researcher—responsible for all content unless otherwise noted
TIMELINE: Five months
COMPANY: Ruby, a B2C startup
Background
Medical emergencies set off avalanches of bills that leave people feeling powerless, frustrated, and overwhelmed. It was while developing the Medical Emergency Kit—a tool to help users collect and have at the ready the key documents they would need in case of an emergency—that Ruby saw an opportunity to create a product to help people with the bills that assuredly follow.
The Challenge
Produce an MVP for an app that informs and empowers users to take charge of their medical bills.
The Outcome
Working closely with my Project Manager and developers, we created an app that addresses the major pain points identified by people struggling to deal with medical bills. Importantly, the app also educates users on how to negotiate their medical bills, potentially saving thousands of dollars.
all bills in one place
A major cause of frustration is not having a clear sense the total amount owed and to whom. I designed a dashboard that provides users a simple way to see bills from multiple providers in a single screen.
Keep better track of bills
People need a better way to keep track of a bill’s progress. In response, I devised an interactive timeline for users to record notes, payments made, and set reminders and to-dos.
encouragement and hope
To help combat the feelings of helplessness and overwhelm, I included visual indications of progress and designed little moments of celebration into the app experience.
RESEARCH + DISCOVERY
Process + deliverables
Research plan |. Market research | Quantitative research | Competitive analysis | SME interview | Qualitative research | Interview guide
Market + quantitative research
Key findings
Qualitative Research
Key takeaways
“...it just turned into a nightmare from there. I’m not even certain I’ve even paid off all of those medical bills and I’m still dealing with medical bills for my new baby. It’s overwhelming.”
SYNTHESIS + DEFINING
Uncovering Insights + Identifying Needs
Defining the design challenge
Primary User Persona
PROJECT STRATEGY
Defining MVP
We felt confident that the final product would need to encompass the themes of Organization, Guidance, and Payment Assistance. However, for MVP, we needed to narrow the scope. I drafted a test plan to outline my approach which included concept testing and card sorting.
Concept testing
Key takeaways
It’s rare to work on something that elicits so much excitement from the participants. We’re on to something.
Much to our surprise, the Organizing theme set was the clear winner.
The most valuable concepts were the timeline, the ability to see all bills in one place, and negotiation help.
PROTOTYPING + TESTING
User Flow
Usability testing
The testing and iterating phase lasted several months. For each test, I created a usability test plan.
KEY FINDINGS
There needed to be more points of encouragement and indication of progress
The Oooh! moments were consistently: the ability to talk to someone, the timeline, and the negotiation script
The timeline feature was important enough to need to be accessible through the bottom nav
One main finding was that we were treating payment plans differently than bills. Realizing they should be treated the same way was a major revelation and helped things really click into place.
UI DESIGN
High-fidelity wireframes
Design system
FINAL TAKEAWAYS
There were definitely hurdles to overcome and pivots to be made along the way. For example, the original plan was to integrate with a bill scanning API so that a user could simply snap a photo of their bills. This ultimately was scrapped due to cost, so we had to reroute with a manual entry design.
During testing it became increasingly clear that negotiation needed to be the focal point of the MVP so we pivoted to focus on a feature that would guide users through the process.
Overall, this project was a major testament to the power of communication and teamwork. Our small team rallied to develop an MVP in just over four months. I believe in the ability of this app to really help people in a time of need and am proud to have played a part in creating it.
Next Steps
Throughout the research and testing process, one major pain point that continued to arise was confusion about insurance. For future enhancements, I’d like to integrate information and features to help users with this particular challenge.