When we transitioned users to a new appointments tool, monthly users jumped from 500,000 to nearly 1 million. Customer satisfaction scores increased from 56% to 75% during that time, with new users responding most positively.
Background
Veterans had to navigate three different portals to access their health care information. The VA was working toward switching off two of those portals so Veterans would be able to access everything in one place. Our team was tasked with building the tool that would let Veterans manage and schedule appointments in the new unified portal experience. For this project we improved upon all the functionality users had come to expect from the previous portal and added new scheduling features. We also provided an easy transition from the old portals.
My work
To accomplish this I set up the research and testing strategy for our team:
- Ran a comparative analysis between the existing portals, and health care portals in the private sector, to make sure the tool had all the features users were expecting.
- Tested early concepts with Veterans to make sure the tool was exceeding their needs.
- Tested multiple prototypes, and asked participants in those tests to compare the prototypes with the existing functionality.
- Ran user acceptance tests with underserved veterans, and users of assistive technology.
- Created a seamless IA flow from one portal to the other.
Outcome
Even with the increase in users, positive feedback has remained higher than before the transition. Users haven’t noted any major new issues or feature requests which indicates that we were successful in capturing the key functionality from the old portal.