— BACKGROUND

The Context

Origin is a company that provides physical therapy for women and mothers. Around March/April during COVID-19, Origin was rebranding and looking for ways to improve their virtual offerings. I first worked with Origin to fine-tune the user interface of their homepage to make it more intuitive, and then helped them map out how to streamline their service. Below is a diagram of the cross-functional team:

— DISCOVERY

Initial Research

I conducted a UX analysis of the website and Carine and Holly conducted a survey with 22 clients and had internal discussions with on-boarding employees. Here is what we discovered:
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The overall value proposition as unclear by looking at the website.
The navigation was not intuitive for many users.
Some patients need manual work and so they do not see the value of virtual physical therapy.
New patients have difficulty understanding certain concepts during virtual appointments.
Scheduling, on-boarding and follow-up feels disjointed due to different software use.

Objective

Examine how the issues taking place on the back-end are impacting the issues taking place on the front-end. Use this knowledge to balance the business and user needs in order to streamline the service and improve customer acquisition.

— USER RESEARCH

Methods

Two methods were used to gather more in-depth insights. The first was a contextual inquiry. This method enabled me to engage with the process the way a typical user would. I experienced scheduling, on-boarding, visiting a physical therapist and follow-up messaging. The second method was 1-on-1 interviews. We recruited a total of 6 participants for Zoom interviews. This included patients and stakeholders at Origin.

— FINDINGS

Research Wall

I created a research wall based on all the information that was gathered from my contextual inquiry, interviews with stakeholders, interviews with patients, and feedback from internal discussions. I then pulled out significant themes from these findings.

KEY INSIGHTS

Frustrations

Clients

● It’s difficult to follow exercises through Zoom and Patients find the the Physitrack app(which has at-home exercise videos) to be impersonal and difficult to use.
● Some patients have a fear of developing injuries in virtual care.
● Pre-Covid some patients had to schedule their in-person appts around LA traffic or childcare.
● There is a loss of community in virtual care that new mothers are missing.
● Patients often lack the correct equipment at home which makes it diffcult to do exercises.

stakeholders
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● Too many different software are being used for scheduling, on-boarding and follow-up.
● Clients do not fill out new patient forms on time and there is limited support to remind them to do so. This makes it difficult to bill insurance.
● Before COVID, patients could simply reschedule at the front desk, now patients are not as consistent with re-booking because the burden falls more on them.
● If patients do not book virtually or fill out their on-boarding documents on time, Origin has to send them separate invoices which makes it hard to keep track.

— REDESIGNING THE USER INTERFACE

Designing the Landing

I conducted an ux analysis of the landing and noticed that there were opportunities to make it more intuitive for users. A natural progression for a user would be to understand the value prop, to learn how it works, to learn about the services, get a deeper sense of the experience and then book an appointment. This in turn would help the business.

I first redesigned the navigation bar. I designed it to start from 'How it works' on the left to 'Book Appointment' on the right. I did this to mirror a user's mental model. I then changed the wording of some menu items. Previously, instead of 'Blog', the website said 'Learn'. From my previous testing in other projects, users generally don’t understand menu items that say things like “learn” or “education”. Additionally, the website said "getting started" instead of 'Book Now' or 'Book Appointment' which was not straightforward.

I then suggested that Origin make their value prop clear on their hero image and I added a CTA (book appointment). We want users to know what is being offered and what we want them to do about that.
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I then redesigned their "What We Treat" section for clarity, and finally, I suggested they change the term “Testimonials” to “What our community is saying” to create a more intimate experience. Below are examples I mocked up for Origin.
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— REDESIGNING THE SERVICE

Improving Touchpoints

After redesigning some of the elements on the landing, I created a service blueprint to help Origin visualize how to restructure their service to meet both client and stakeholder needs.

— IMPLEMENTATIONS

New Developments

I presented my findings and the service map to the entire Origin team. The company is currently in the process of slowly implementing the recommendations. While things like the physical therapist filmed exercise videos are still on the roadmap, thus far:
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The homepage has been redesigned to incorporate the value prop at CTA.
Patients can have a 15 minute phone consultation to understand the value.
The 'help' page has been redesigned for more clarity about what to expect.
In July 2020, Origin launched online group classes for pregnancy and postpartum.
Changes have been made to the booking system to improve efficiency.
The company is hiring more team members to help with on-boarding and follow-up.
The company will be rolling out branded kits with: basic equipment (will be implemented in 2-3 weeks).

Impact

“We implemented your recommendations regarding how to convey the value propositions of our work and have seen a very low customer acquisition cost (CAC) as a result. It's a fraction (25%) of the CAC I hear from competitors”.