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My HealtheVet on VA.gov has over 6 million users, with several hundred thousands Veterans accessing the Medical Records domain each day. Given the amount of traffic and necessity of what Veterans are using MHV for, it was important to think about how to increase findability and overall ease of use.
There is no filtering and sorting on any Medical Records page. As such, Veterans navigate to their records by going to the relevant domain (ex. Lab and test results, or Care summaries and notes), and then using pagination to find the individual record they are looking for. All domains are sorted newest to oldest on default.
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findability frustrations
The MHV team's UX researchers encountered that Veterans were feeling frustrated when trying to find specific information. This was true for the overall MHV site as well as specific Medical Records pages.
-What kinds of features would be intuitive for Veterans to use?
-What kinds of features would be most accessible for Veterans with physical and cognitive disabilities to use?
-What kinds of features would best help Veterans find what they need more efficiently?
-How might we add in UI changes to ease navigation?
Veterans within the Medical Records pages on My HealtheVet need a more efficient way to navigate through medical records, so that they can quickly find the specific records they need.
Adding in filtering and sorting features within Medical Records can solve for this problem, by providing navigational tools to narrow down the scope of records listed.
I began iterating on how best to allow Veterans to more easily find records, which included thinking through where to put sort and filter designs. And, it was important to think through if the same sort and filter abilities should apply to each domain. For example:
-Is sorting alphabetically useful in finding Lab and test results, or in finding Vaccines?
-Should Veterans filter by date, or by provider name, or by something else?
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These initial designs went through multiple stages of feedback from the Medical Records UX Design Lead, accessibility team leads, and Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) team members. After an initial design intent call, I created high-fidelity wireframes which then went through additional rounds of feedback from these stakeholders. I also coordinated with developers in advance of handoff to ensure the designs were logical and within scope.
These final wireframes also went through another round of feedback called Midpoint Review with OCTO team members, which also included accessibility review.
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The final design showcased here shows how both the filtering and sorting features can be used together. However, it is important to note that each domain within Medical Records has its own logic given the different use cases of each domain. The user flow below highlights these differences. Furthermore, these UI changes impacted PDF and TXT file designs, so it was important to think of the downstream implications of these designs.
-Decreased time in finding medical results
-Reduced frustration signals and error rates
-Decreased pain points
In addition to ensuring proper handoff with developers, I went through each element of the design with the assigned developer to anticipate any questions or areas of concern, since this as an entirely new design feature. It was also important to monitor progress and be available for further questions/discussion as needed, and to update our changelog and Figma files so that production matched Figma.
As this was a new tool and design function with Medical Records, it was also critical to coordinate with our UX researchers to monitor its use via Datadog and any Medallia feedback, and to plan to on future usability tests.