Internship Project Overview

Project Name: Epic Summer Internship Project
Role: UX Design Intern
Date: May - August 2022
For the summer of 2022, I interned at Epic Systems in Madison, Wisconsin as a user experience designer. During my internship, I was partnered with a software developer intern and we owned a project for Epic’s patient-facing app, MyChart.

Getting Started

What's the Problem?
The problem my partner and I were given at the beginning of the summer was something like this: There is an existing page on MyChart called Health Summary that needs to be updated on both the front and back end.
Design Process
To solve our problem we followed the Double Diamond design process model.

Discover

The Current Health Summary
I kicked off the project by first taking a look at the existing Health Summary page. With the help of my team and partner we found what the main areas for improvement on the page were.
User Interviews
I then created a research activity to help us understand who the user is and what information they want to see on a Health Summary. I conducted interviews with participants to gain insights on who they are. Afterwards participants then completed an activity that had allowed them to create their own health summary screen from a list of different types of health information.

Results

  1. Interviewed 10 participants
  2. Out of all categories of information available medications, preventive care, conditions, test results, and allergies were the most common
  3. Found that participants expected to see their most recent information as opposed to all the information Epic has

Define

My partner and I defined the problem to be similar to the one that was given to us. The Health Summary page needed a redesign.
Problems
  1. The page doesn't serve as a good summary
  2. Web and Mobile are not consistent
  3. The tabs are causing problems
*Fake User Information

Develop

After we defined the project, I began sketching wireframes. The initial ideas I had centered around how to display all the information that is currently on Health Summary without the tabs.

But Wait!

This is where things got challenging. We received feedback that Health Summary doesn't have a clear use case the way it is currently and the problem goes deeper than a simple redesign. Just as we thought we would leave the first diamond we had to take a step back. We knew we needed to spend more time clearly defining our problem even if that meant going beyond our initial task.

Back to Define

Now we are back to defining the project. Since I already know the outcome of this project, I can tell you that this is when our project began taking on a new name. Around this point, our project became known as Health Hub.
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At this point, we took our time clearly defining what our project needed to be and we came up with the following:
Problem
There is no dedicated MyChart activity where users can view a summary of all their health information
User
  1. Users with regular interactions with the health system who have a substantial amount of health information
  2. Users who want to be proactive about their health and make sure that it is in a good place
Project Goals
Allow users to:
  1. See a snapshot of their core health information
  2. Dive deep into the different pillars of their health
  3. Proactively manage their health
Problem Statement
How might we give patients a holistic overview of their health so that they can understand the big picture and take proactive steps to manage their care?

Develop

Now with a clear, well-defined problem statement and project goal, I was back to ideating solutions. After much consideration, we decided what the solution to the problem should be.
Solution
A page containing widgets for each type of health information. Each widget will need to be uniquely designed based on the information it is displaying. The widget would consist of two main sections, a summary section, and a details section.

Benefits

  1. More consolidated view of general health information
  2. Improved patient navigation
  3. Page would now serve a functional purpose
  4. Get rid of tabs
  5. Common view on web and mobile
I spent a good chunk of time just trying many different ideas for how these widgets should look. There was lots of trial and error and many many design feedback sessions.
I found that one of my biggest challenges was making the summary portion of the widgets visually interesting.

Deliver

Final Mockups
Usability Study
With only a few days left of my internship, I wanted to validate my designs to the best of my ability. I did this but conducting an informal usability study with 10 Epic employees and MyChart users.

Goal

Validate that the Health Hub design is clearly understood by users.

Questions

  1. Do users know which items are actionable? 
  2. Do users know how to navigate to the full activities?  
  3. Is the summary portion of the cards understood by users? 

Details

  1. Interviewed 10 participants
  2. Had participants complete 3 tasks related to the questions

Results

All participants were able to complete all 3 tasks. Most of them with little to no trouble or hesitation.
Survey
I also wanted to know what the overall impressions of the page were. After participants completed the usability tasks I asked them to fill out a survey that contained many different adjectives.

Results

With More Time

Things to Think About

  1. How does the styling change with customer branding
  2. Should we allow the user to customize their health hub?
  3. Should the cards be collapsible, specifically for mobile view?

Things to Do

  1. Design more widgets such as test results, trends dashboard, and medical family history