The Brief:

Create a new feature that allows users to gain health suggestion from professionals. In addition, update the website to attract new users while retaining existing ones.

Our Solution:

The WebMD team came up with a health suggestion feature located on the WebMD site. Professional recommendations are provided after a user fills out a short survey. All suggestions are based on the users location and the health issue they want to address.

My Role:

Project Manager, Strategy & Implementation, UI Designer, Information Architect

User Research

Our UX team conducted user interviews locally within General Assembly. Everyone we came across have heard of and used WebMD before. Some of the people interviewed used WebMD continuously either on a daily or weekly basis.

What we gathered from our interviews is that users didn’t like WebMD’s current layout. The content is too cluttered and it’s difficult to navigate. Trustworthiness was another big issues with the survey takers. A lot of users don’t like giving away personal information to a site because they don’t know where the information is going. Having large advertising doesn’t aid the trustworthiness and it distracts the users.

Avid WebMD User

The user interviews allowed our team to identify various user personas. We identified three typical users in this industry. WebMD caters to users who are focused on a healthy lifestyle or a busy college student who would self diagnose rather then spend money and go to a doctor.

Affinity Diagram

Our team compiled user feedback into an affinity diagram . The diagram help us understand other competitors, pain-points, what currently works and user suggestions. Taking these issues into account aided our design approach in addressing the specific issues the WebMd users experience as well as build the new health feature.

Survey Results

Our demographic base consisted of a majority of 26 - 32 year olds.

Majority of survey takers stated that the Symptom Checker and Health Lifestyle are the most relevant features to a health related site.

90% of the survey takers have visited WebMD.

MayoClinic came second at 60% of users.

Survey takers agreed that trustworthiness of the content was the most important areas that need to be improved in health sites.

User Personas

Our main user persona is Tanya

WebMD caters to users who are focused on a living a healthy lifestyle while juggling or a career or school.

Sketching and Brainstorming with the team

Website Architecture

My team and I created sitemap and a user a user flow prior to designing the wireframes. This allowed us to have the structure and the site content at a solid place prior to design.