AntiFragility Health
End-to-End UX Research • Research Methods • Qualitative Interviews • Affinity Model • Product Concept Development
Project Overview
Improving Customer Journey at Anti-Fragility Health
Within 2 months, our 5-person team conducted end-to-end research at a healthcare startup, improving the customer journey through qualitative interviews and a contextual design inquiry process that included interpretation sessions, affinity mapping, journey mapping, and product concept development.
March - May 2023 • 2 months
My Contributions
I played a pivotal role in mapping the customer journey by synthesizing inputs from clinicians, patients, and lifestyle coaches. My contributions focused on creating a comprehensive visualization to enhance the user experience. By leveraging insights, I aimed to identify pain points and opportunities, providing AFH with valuable recommendations to refine and optimize the overall healthcare journey for its patients.
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Client: AntiFragility Health, Anaheim, California
About the Client
AntiFragility Health (AFH) operates as a research-driven medical clinic situated in Anaheim, California. What sets AFH apart is its fusion of naturopathic therapy, holistic practices, and conventional Western medicine, combined with advanced diagnostics guided by biomarkers. Following a 5P approach, AFH's core belief revolves around patient-centered preventive care, emphasizing that healthcare is more than just finding cures; it involves cultivating a comprehensive approach to well-being. AFH is committed to providing tailored, forward-looking, preventive, and collaborative health assistance to a wide range of individuals.
The Goal: Optimizing AFH's
Healthcare Journey
AFH endeavored to craft a visual representation of the customer journey by integrating insights from clinicians, patients, and lifestyle coaches. The primary goal was to elevate the user experience and gain a thorough understanding of customers' healthcare journeys. Through this strategic approach, AFH aimed to pinpoint existing challenges and identify potential opportunities for enhancing the overall patient experience.
Research Questions
In order to gain a profound understanding of the customer journey and enhance their user experience, our emphasis centered on a crucial aspect:
“What strategies and interventions can be implemented to enhance the healthcare experiences and outcomes for individuals, taking into account their unique backgrounds, preferences, and needs?”
By pinpointing these motivations, we could discern various touchpoints and interactions for customers. Recognizing these distinctions allowed us to leverage AFH's strengths, explore novel opportunities, and address any identified pain points, ultimately elevating the overall patient journey.
Define Research Plan and conduct 5 interviews of 30 minutes each
Interpretation
Session: Data Analysis & Interpretation
Affinity Mapping
Identity Model and Journey Map
Product Concept Development
Methodology followed for the project
Interviews
05 participants were recruited for our study through a client-driven approach at AntiFragility Health. Leveraging their extensive knowledge and connections within the target population, AFH actively identified suitable individuals based on predetermined criteria. The participants, some of whom were active patients and others current employees seeking health advice/treatments from clinic doctors, were referred to us by AFH. This client-facilitated recruitment method ensured the inclusion of a relevant and representative sample for our research.
Interviews were structured into three segments:
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Understanding Symptoms and Treatment: Employing descriptive questions such as 'how did you feel when first experiencing symptoms?' and 'how was your condition explained by your healthcare provider?'.
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Managing Relationships and Everyday Life: This section explored the impact of illness on relationships, with questions like 'how has your illness affected relationships with family, friends, and coworkers?' and 'how do you cope with uncertainty?'
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Overall Experience and Insights: The final part included questions like 'what advice would you give to someone recently diagnosed?' and 'looking back, what do you wish you had known at the beginning?'.
Affinity Diagram
An affinity model allowed to organize and make sense of the vast amount of data collected during interviews. These notes were created by transferring key phrases, observations, and insights from the interviews onto individual yellow notes.
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Affinity Model
Key Takeaways
Patients have diverse reasons for starting their health journey with AFH, not just illness.
Preference for holistic approaches over traditional medication among many participants.
Affinity model fostered a shared understanding of research data, promoting consensus-building.
Identity Model
An Identity Model reveals the key identity elements in the target population that a product might touch. It shows sources of pride, self-esteem, and value (Holtzblatt & Beyer, 2016, p. 147). Through this model, the team could collaboratively identify personas, which were fictional representations of typical users based on research insights. It also enabled us to design solutions that were tailored to the specific characteristics and aspirations of each persona, ensuring a more personalized and impactful user experience.
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Journey Map
A journey map visually represents the steps an individual takes to achieve a specific goal. By compiling and organizing user actions into a timeline, we identified stages in participants' interactions with AFH Clinic. This map captured behaviors, thoughts, and emotions, forming a foundation for empathy. This approach helped pinpoint pain points and opportunities, guiding improvements for AFH's overall user experience.
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Journey Map
Key Takeaways
Journey map allowed us to understand the patient experience from start to finish.
Could understand a comprehensive overview of the healthcare
system of the country from the
perspective of patients
Journey map helped us uncover some specific opportunities for intervention.
Key Issues
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Some participants faced challenges in accessing natural and holistic health approaches.
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Participants also highlighted the importance of having personalized resources that they could access for increasing their knowledge and awareness about latest natural health approaches.
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Participants often feel overwhelmed in their health journey and find it difficult to stay motivated in following lifestyle changes.
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Participants like to get instant answers to their questions and information on their specific healthcare needs and AFH professionals might not always be available on demand.
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Participants find it difficult to track their progress and improvements in health based on lifestyle changes.
Hot Ideas
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Tracking and visualizing health related activities to help users monitor activities, such as meditation, for better self-awareness.
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Facilitating community interaction and support of like-minded individuals, fostering a sense of belonging and shared motivation.
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Setting goals and tracking progress enabling them to stay focused and accountable.
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Providing curated resources for users, including podcasts, videos, and blogs, to empower users with reliable health information.
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Offering AI-assisted chatbot for on demand service to enhance the customer experience.
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Showing customers a timeline with the different paths they could follow, or a comparison table between the paths they could take can help them identify which path they would feel more comfortable pursuing.
Product Concept Development
The Homescreen has some visualizations that will allow customers to keep track of their health-related activities, such as meditating. This is the screen where customers will also see relevant posts and suggested resources based on their current health condition.
The Self-tracking feature enables users to set and monitor goals collaboratively with their doctor. Users can interact with detailed progress graphs. The process is gamified with a reward system, akin to credit card points, where reaching goals earns points for discounts on AFH products/services, fostering effective goal adherence.
Users can connect and interact with each other with the Community feature, sharing experiences, advice, and support related to health and wellness topics. This feature can foster a sense of community and motivation among users, while also providing a platform for peer-to-peer learning and engagement.
On the Resources screen, AFH customers can discover external support resources like podcasts, videos, and blogs recommended by AFH professionals and fellow customers. Users can differentiate between resources posted by professionals and those shared by peers by tapping the settings icon in the top-right corner.
The HealthBot feature allows customers to engage with an AI-assisted chatbot, addressing logistical queries and conveying empathy. This feature aims to enhance efficiency for AFH professionals by letting the chatbot handle basic questions, enabling professionals to focus on more complex tasks like supporting customers with specific chronic illnesses and interpreting exam results.
Conclusion
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Empowerment Through Self-Discovery: Customers prefer self-discovery over prescriptive paths, finding value in lessons from similar backgrounds.
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Alternative Options: AFH customers appreciate presented alternative paths for healthier lives, aided by visual aids for informed decisions.
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Personalized Support: AFH's personalized advice and collaborative decision-making foster rapport and ongoing conversations with customers.
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Satisfaction and Continuous Improvement: Customers express satisfaction, emphasizing the need for continuous improvement in AFH services.
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Guiding Enhancement: The insights provided aim to guide AFH in enhancing customer experience and improving overall health outcomes.
Our team's Final Wall Walk with feedback from guests.
(from left to right: Anshika Srivastava, Sanjana Danait, Julio Povedo, CEO of AntiFragility Health Charles Sine, Utkarsh Chhadva, Kalyan Chandana)
