UW Dubstech Protothon
DubsTech Protothon is a UX hackathon that is hosted by the University of Washington. It is geared towards new grads and typically has over 200 participants. Teams have 36 hours to research and design a solution to a specific prompt, and prepare a side deck outlining their design process.
My team participated in the COVID-19 Hospital Care System challenge which required us to design an app that empowers nurses amidst COVID-19, helping them spend more time with patients and less time on administration tasks.
PROJECT DETAILS
My role: UX Researcher
Teammates: Julia Lu, Esther Nam, Tanya Wickham, and Jennelle Valera.
Project duration: 36 hour design hackathon
App type: Native Tablet App
Problem
Hospitals are facing a rapid influx of patients coming in to be identified, isolated, tested, or admitted for COVID-19. Due to this overflow, front-line workers (doctors, nurses, assistants, etc.) are inevitably spending more time on paperwork which is costing them an unnecessary amount of time and hindering them from providing enough care to their patients.
Project Goal
To design a tablet application that allows nurses to seamlessly check-in new patients and communicate with patients, care providers, and rooms so there’s more time for patients and less paperwork.
Key Results
Coordinated and completed five phones interview with healthcare professionals to learn more about the impact COVID-19 is having on their workflow and what challenges they are facing.
Designed high-fidelity mockups for the key screens outlining our proposed design solution to the prompt and keeping the user goals and pain points in consideration.
Our design was judged by 11 industry professionals from companies such as Facebook, Amazon, and Accenture and our team came in 3rd place out of 40 team submissions.
My Contributions & Tools Used
I used: Figma, Zoom, Paper and Pens.
I completed: User interviews.
I created: A user journey map and rough user interface sketches.
USER INTERVIEWS
Goal: To learn how COVID-19 has impacted nurses and other healthcare professionals across the US. To learn about the general patient check-in and room assignment processes and how COVID-19 has impacted their workflows.
Result: We interviewed five healthcare professionals from nurses to ER doctors, and uncovered various pain points and needs that our app could address.
COMparative analysis
Goal: To learn more about other healthcare apps, and learn about the layout, functionality, and tap functions/animations for iOS tablet apps.
Result: Our team quickly learned more about tablet apps and what to consider when designing a healthcare app.
User Journey
Goal: To gain insights on how to optimize the customer experience by outlining the journey a user when experiencing the problems uncovered during our research and how the new app could address their issues and goals.
Results: We learned a variety of key insights throughout the journey mapping process that helped us move forward with our design in a quick and efficient way that allowed us to optimize the user’s experience.
GROUP Sketching
Goal: To work as a group to understand the problem we are trying to solve, outline objectives for the solution, make a plan of action to solve the problem, and generate several designs.
Result: We were able to quickly brainstorm solutions to the problem as a group and take the best elements from each sketch and create a refined set of preliminary sketches before moving onto the digital mockups.
High-Fidelity Mockups
Goal: To outline the key screens for our proposed app that address the problems outlined in the design prompt, and consider the goals and pain-points uncovered during the research.
Result: The overall solution allows nurses to see their favorite features on a dashboard and check in pre-registered patients and new patients without using any paper. Nurses can also easily assign patient rooms, beds and doctors during the check in process, and access the patient contact information to communicate with them directly through the app.
Project Submission & Judging
Goal: To submit our design solution on time and outline our research and design process in a clear and compelling slide deck.
Result: We submitted our project on time, along with 40 other teams. Our project was judged by 11 industry professionals from companies such as Facebook, Amazon and Accenture and our design came in 3rd place!
Lessons Learned
You and your team are likely doing better than you think. Stop overthinking every thing, commit to your decisions, and get the work done!
Disagreements between teammates can be productive and enlightening, but can also result in overthinking things and wasting time. Know when to disagree and commit.
Clear and concise communication is vital for any group project to succeed. Take the time to craft well thought out discussion points before sharing your thoughts with your team to avoid wasting time.
Sometimes projects hit a wall and the team can feel a bit helpless. Recognize that it is ok to feel like this, take a break to regroup and remind the team what the ultimate goal is. Revisit and update any open ended questions that need to be answered in order to achieve your project goal.
What I enjoyed Most
Talking with front-line staff at hospitals and learning about their goals and pain points, and thinking of solutions that could empower them and make their job less stressful.
Working on a project with a with a tight deadline, and leveraging my project management skills to keep our time on schedule.
Getting to compete with hundreds of designers around the world and seeing all of the innovative solutions each team came up with.
Getting feedback from industry professionals and learning more about how to collaborate with other designers.