Project Scope

Our healthcare management client was seeking ways to engage non-member populations, speicifcally educators, to drive growth. Over the course of an eight week sprint, we worked with out client, bringing expertise across the enterprise together to identify priorities, needs and risks associated with the innovation project while testing desirability and viability of a new health platform. Key outcomes for the engagement were:

Development of one (1) low fidelity experience prototype to simulate the solution
Testing of one (1) to two (2) different components (i.e., features or use cases) of our POC with potential platform audiences recruited and provided by the client (e.g., both the provider-facing and patient-facing).
Generation of insights into whether the solution is worth pursuing by demonstrating business value and consumer demand for selected use case.

What we did

Concept Desirability Assessment

We needed to deliver prototypes that helped answer the question “What kind of products will educators use?” However, the client didn’t have any research to share and we weren’t given a discovery phase. We needed to efficiently guage what kind of products users would want and then design accordingly. Desirability testing enabled us to deliver a prototype that operated as a mechanism of discovery rather than as a demonstration of a final product.

desirability test (n): a kind of user testing that presents concept visualizations to assess what users need and value rather than the merits of a specific product.

Secondary research

We conducted an inventory of current client offerings for educators.
We reviewed the initial research from the business case.
We conducted initial research using any and all internet sources about the current situation in schools
and the needs of educators, particularly in regard to health services.

Concept Generation

We exercised our imaginations. Removing any parameters about implementation or client expectations,
we conceived as many original concepts about potentially desirable products as we could.

Concept Selection

We culled our ideas using a matrix.

Desirability Testing

We presented a set of four concept mockups to a sample pool of eight educators. We prepared a set of probes for each concept and gathered notes about user reactions for each. Probes addressed ethnographic considerations of educators like their allocation of time, the types of activities for which they are responsible, the way their mental health is impacted by their work and the cotexts in which they would utilize the product. We then asked our subjects to rank the desirability of the concepts and to weigh in about the modality (tablet, desktop, phone VR)

Concepts

interactive strategic guide

A user can quickly find actionable information related to a critical situation in the school.
In this case, they find an action guide to address a fight that recently broke out on school grounds

VIRTUAL IMMERSION

A user can learn by doing in a realistic virtual space. In this case a school administrator explores how to resolve a conflict between staff members.

EVENT RECIPES

A user can follow a pre-made guide to organize a beneficial community event
In this case we see a kit of planning a restorative staff retreat to combat burnout.

SOCIAL MEDIA INSPRIRATION

Users can view videos, photos and instructions from individuals in their community and add their own content to a community space dedicated to sharing healthy content and inspiration.

Workshop Design and Facilitation

We were fortunate to be able to host an offsite workshop with stakeholders. Because the workshop happened
late in the project (only a week before user tests) and we had already been in conversation with the majority
of people who were in attendance, the workshop served as a methodology immersion, prototype review,
and as a consensus building opportunity.

Short Video of Target Users

I created a short video featuring the voices of different members of the school community including: administrators, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, and teachers. The video was assembled in two days using footage sourced from Youtube. Though it was quick and dirty, it grounded our workshop in a common understanding of the experiences of the target users

vr demo

To start the day, participants were led on a tour of the San Francisco Hub. They were shown some of the robotics
projects that are underway and were also given a chance to play a VR game. The VR game cast participants in the role of social workers who were conducting a home visit to assess whether a child is safe in their home so the game also helped us demonstrate one of our desirability concepts.

Live Demonstration of User Testing

To demonstrate how the kind of user who appeared in the video might engage in desirability testing, we
presented a role play. One team member adopted the persona of an educator while another asked some
of the questions we had scripted for our testing. The demo concretized stakeholder understanding of how desirability testing works and underscored the value of user testing by showing the kind of insight that emerges from ‘real’ people interacting with visual provocations.

concept reviews

We set up giant posters featuring our four concepts and asked a standard set of questions.
attendees were didvided into small groups that rotated between prototypes and collectively brainstormed
answers that were recorded with good old sticky notes.The questions that stakeholders asked deepened our understanding of the perspectives of individual stakeholders, giving us great insight into how to effectively frame findings. We also gained some excellent design input that we were able to incorporate into our prototypes before testing.

results synthesis

After copying sticky notes to digital ones, we affinitized our findings and prioritized which changes to
make to our prototypes and scripts.