UX research in healthcare: a case study

As healthcare is starting to focus more on quality of life and user experiences, UX research and design has become increasingly relevant, even in caregiver-facing products. 

Healthcare providers don’t use these systems for pleasure. They use them for their job. So what we design really needs to work; the stakes are high.

As a matter of fact, according to Graphite Digital’s report, “a lack of user research greatly increases the chance that digital products will be ineffective for their target users, leading to huge resource inefficiencies and the potential for harm to patients.”

We can’t have that; so, in this blog post, we’ll explore how UX research helps building more efficient healthcare products, reduce risks, and increase revenue. 

UX research 101

UX research is a field of research that focuses on user experience when interacting with digital products. 

Everybody wants to know how users behave. Shareholders, marketing, you name it. This is why user research has become an essential part of building digital products. 

A UX researcher’s job is to collect deep insights on:

• How users use a digital product, website or app
• User’s perspective, needs and challenges
• Potential solutions (UX best practices)
• Strategic advice

These actionable insights help companies build efficient, user-centered solutions.

Researchers typically use methods such as:

• User interviews
• Usability testing
• Surveys
• A/B testing
• Field research
• Heuristic evaluation

To implement findings, user researchers tend to work in collaboration with UX designers, who can respond to issues with design solutions, and innovate to improve usability.

Let’s see how user research and design can support healthcare professionals.

Designing for healthcare: a little goes a long way

When a simple thing requires 15 clicks, or healthcare providers can't perform routine tasks without having to go through 6 input fields, then your system has a problem.

Since B2B healthcare products are typically made by developers with no design involvement, they can become bloated and way too complex over time. It happens to the best of us.

The good news is, we believe that you can achieve a lot of great things with basic UX.  You don’t have to spend a lot of money or invest a lot of time to fix or prevent issues. If you shorten a workflow from five clicks to three, that already adds up for a professional in their day-to-day life.

In a recent project with EZDerm, a popular dermatology EHR & PM, our researcher/designer duo was able to run research, collect findings, and present actionable redesign suggestions in just 4 weeks. Let’s see how.

Case study: the user research process

When EZDerm hired us to prepare a redesign plan for their cross-platform health record software, they already knew they had a problem. They just didn’t know where to start fixing it. 

The product was old, and massive. Onboarding required special training. It was built as a cross-platform tool, but the user experience was very different on desktops, phones and tablets. (Try clicking on tiny buttons on your phone while wearing gloves!) There were 16 different icons on the navigation bar at the bottom, and it was impossible to instinctively find features.

They called us to the rescue.

“UX research in healthcare prioritizes the needs and experiences of patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals. One of the hallmarks is systematic, empathetic consideration of their perspectives to develop services, products, and systems. Safety and effectiveness are paramount.” (Dovetail)

We jumped in, and got to work.

Step 1: Getting to know the product

What was very clear from the beginning was that we really had to understand everything at first, and then change small things step-by-step. Just because something is not up to standard UX-wise, you cannot delete it: it could blow up the entire product. 

The research approach for this was to do a very extensive information architecture mapping and to talk to experts inside the company, for example customer support and developers, who understand every step of the product. This didn’t take much time: it’s a routine task for our researchers. 

Step 2: Getting to know the audience

Next, we did runs of user interviews and workshops with the target groups. These were not feature request sessions: instead, we wanted to understand what were they using the product for, which parts of them were they using and what were their biggest frustrations.

We had sessions with practitioners, doctors, front-desk, and medical staff who were frequently using the product. As always, this was done in close collaboration with the client, so they could be directly involved in the process to make sure we had the right people. Our researcher took extra care to apply B2B user research best practices, use the company’s tone of voice, and closely follow their guidelines when interacting with users. 

The resulting interview findings not only supported our design work, but helped marketing, sales and development teams understand target groups better.

Step 3: Finding the low points

We visually mapped out what various user groups, from nurses to surgeons, were doing in the product, how they were doing it, and what was their experience with it. User journey maps are step-by-step breakdowns of these with a high level of detail.

These artifacts helped us to identify the issues with the product: where did they occur and how could we improve them. If there's a lot of overlap in one part then if you fix those things then it can benefit multiple user groups. 

Besides this, we also ran a heuristics evaluation, which is basically a type of audit where we examine whether UX best practices are violated anywhere in the product: for example, if there are navigation issues that went unnoticed. 

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Step 4: Prioritizing fixes

After we understood the workflow of each group and we identified the main pain points, we  facilitated a prioritization workshop where we examined what were the lowest hanging fruits. We also considered the amount of UX design and development work which would be needed to redesign them. 

The main thing to consider was:

1.  how many people use the feature
2.  how big are the issues with it 
3. and how much effort would it take to fix that thing.  

We mapped these out for the various parts of the product. You can achieve the best improvements with the smallest effort with a high userbase–of course, eventually you have to fix everything, but this is a good place to start.

Let’s see some examples. 

1. Example: low effort, low reward

The appointment scheduling system was mainly used by the front desk. Even though it was one of the more fleshed out parts of the product, it had some very easy to fix things–but it was probably not going to bring the most value.

2. Example: high effort, high reward

The most used and most important part of the product was the progress note, where dermatologists could document everything. It had a large amount of features (like prescriptions, medical history, body map, examination, diagnosis, treatment plan), which were  all related and connected and it was incredibly complicated to navigate.

Because of this, it would’ve been extremely challenging to change things around. So this was a high effort fix, but it would also have had a high impact.

3. Example: the goldilocks zone – low effort, high reward

When a patient arrives at the clinic, they get handed over an iPad and they have to fill out their information.

We found that this was causing a huge pain for the patients, the medical staff, and the front desk. Patients had a lot of difficulty with the overly complex form. For example, they often couldn’t find their medication, faced navigation issues, and got confused by the unclear interface and input fields. So, they frequently had to ask for help. It was not only frustrating to everybody involved, but also slowed down the process; but UX-wise, it was a relatively easy fix. 

By simplifying the form, we could improve the product by a ton. This small change could affect the whole practice, because patients would be less likely to be frustrated, the front desk and the medical staff wouldn’t have to jump in, and the doctor could see more patients because waiting times got shorter. A win-win, if there was ever one.

Step 5. Handover

At the end of the collaboration, we handed over all of our findings and suggestions. These helped EZDerm create a strategic plan on how to handle the redesign process, prioritize tasks and select approaches. They also got to know their user groups better and could identify their biggest challenges.

What’s more, when your product has a much better user experience than a competitor’s, then you will have more users, and happier ones, too, leading to higher UX research ROI. 

So don't be afraid to start small, because UX is a powerful field. Small changes can help a lot.

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Summary

Our collaboration with EZDerm is just one example of how research can guide meaningful change. By identifying usability issues, understanding workflows, and prioritizing high-impact changes, UX research makes sure that digital healthcare products truly support the professionals who rely on them. 

UX Studio brings deep research expertise and a pragmatic design approach to healthcare projects. We specialize in turning complex systems into effective tools that save time, reduce risk, and improve business outcomes. 

Let’s work together to create products that care for the caregivers — because when they succeed, everyone benefits.