Project Overview
This was a client project as part of our course at General Assembly’s User Experience Design Immersive. Bar & Hertz Recovery is a physiotherapy social enterprise founded in August 2020 that aims to “introduce technology based solutions to alleviate chronic pain for everyone, especially those who are underprivileged and underserved”. This is mainly achieved through Bar and Hertz’s partnership with physiotherapy clinics across Singapore, serving as both a platform that allows prospective patients to access these treatments and clinics as well as providing these clinics with the product and technology that allows them to perform Extracorporeal Shockwave Therapy (ESWT) for patients.Our goal was to create a customer-facing web app that would allow patients to book and manage their appointment. This aligns with Bar and Hertz’s social media marketing campaign as a means of promoting their cause with the hopes of increasing new user sign ups. Business Analysis
A business analysis of Bar & Hertz allows us to identify the objective of our project, which was to align our design to Bar and Hertz’s marketing efforts. After a discussion with our clients, our group decided that we were going to design a web app for Bar and Hertz as most users will be accessing Bar and Hertz through Facebook and Instagram advertisements.Understanding our Users
To provide a more general understanding of our users’ habits, goals and frustration, we structured our interview questions according to the process of physical therapy bookings.
We were able to identify that most of our users that seek physiotherapy treatment lies in the age range of 30 years old. This persona essentially enables us to encapsulate our target audience through understanding their behaviour, frustrations and goals.
With our persona, we were able to create a customer journey map to provide our clients with more understanding on our persona’s experience when he goes through the entire process of physical therapy booking. This provides a visualisation of the various touchpoints that our persona has to go through during the process of physical therapy booking. We’ve decided to focus on the awareness, consideration, decision and loyalty stages as these are areas that have the potential for us to emphasise on Bar and Hertz’s value proposition and establish brand identity among new customers.
Comparative Analysis
Our group conducted a comparative analysis with other companies that have a similar business model to Bar and Hertz Recovery. We wanted to reference the features that we can include in Bar and Hertz’s mobile web app.
Feature Prioritisation
It was important that our group was able to identify and prioritise the features that we would want to implement in the Bar and Hertz’s mobile web app. The criteria that our group have created was in line with Bar and Hertz’s business goals and strategy. With the features decided and the business strategy of Bar and Hertz’s mobile web app in mind, we were able to create a user flow that helps us visualise and understand the experience we want our customers to undergo when they enter the site.User Flow
For the mobile web app site map, we streamlined the original Bar and Hertz’s website and made it less cluttered and accessible for first time users navigating through the web app. This was validated and reiterated through subsequent usability testings where we took into account users’ feedback.Information Architecture
Original Site Map (Bar and Hertz’s website)
New Site MapWireflow
Usability Test 1
Results
With these insights, we were more clear on the iterations that we had to do for the next prototype. It also provides our clients with a clear understanding of how we can further develop the web app.
Style Guide
For our second prototype, we wanted to produce something of a higher fidelity than the 1st prototype to get a more comprehensive feedback on how to better improve not only the usability but the design of the web app. We’ve decided to create a branding and style guide to help with this process.
For this iteration, we focused on refining the information on partner clinics and how B&H works to allow first time users to better understand what B&H does. We believe that this was imperative to B&H’s value proposition especially when users can understand what they are signing up for and how this treatment can help them.
We have also revamped the account information to provided more visual hierarchy to highlight past and upcoming appoints as well as reward progress. This was done to increase the functionality of B&H’s mobile web app.
Usability Test 2
Prototype
Handover
On top of our prototype, we’ve decided to provide our client with a service blueprint to show them the various juncture and touchpoints that we have both addressed and have not addressed. Our clients would therefore have a clearer understanding on the actions they would have to take after our handover.
Lastly, our group narrowed down the potential next steps that our clients can consider taking. We believe that this would provide Bar and Hertz with more concrete and actionable steps to continue developing the mobile web app.
Next Steps and Takeaways
My first client project was an insightful experience. It was a lot different from the other projects that I have done at General Assembly. We had to ensure that our clients were able to follow and understand whatever we did. This meant that we had to ensure that our insights and findings are communicated in the clearest and easiest way. This was also one of the reasons why we’ve decided to not include quantitative results such as SEQs in our findings and we have only decided to use Plus and Deltas as a way to communicate and present our findings. We believe that qualitative feedbacks were a more specific way to highlight specific changes and improvements we need to make.
Furthermore, we had to manage our client’s expectations especially when our group were not able to complete certain goals due to its feasibility. For example, our group was initially tasked to also find a way to manage and maintain partner clinics’ compliances as current partner clinics are not updating Bar and Hertz on patients’ attendances for physiotherapy sessions which makes it hard for Bar and Hertz to verify the reward system. However, we were not able to address this issue because it was not feasible especially given the duration of our project. Thus, we had to find a way to manage our clients’ expectations and convey our concerns in the most professional and constructive way possible.
Overall, this was a different and enriching experience. I am glad that I was able to go through this project as it provided me with real life experience of managing a client project as well as interacting and learning from them at such a capacity.