Portfolio

Explore

Portfolio

Portfolio

Jenny Wang

Improved Veterans’ online medical supplies reordering experience

Led the revamp of the medical supplies reordering tool, enhancing the user interface and streamlining the process for quickly identifying and ordering available supplies.

Overview

Project Summary

As My HealtheVet (MHV) transitions to VA.gov, it is essential to consolidate all health tools for Veterans in one location. The medical supplies reordering tool is a key component of this initiative. Improving this tool during its migration will create a unified health portal experience and allow for additional medical devices and supplies. Currently, they can reorder hearing aid batteries and accessories, CPAP supplies, and prosthetic socks. Before adding more supplies to the tool, our team wants to pause and evaluate how the tool is performing so that we are prepared and confident to make more supplies available for Veterans to reorder, which will also reduce the use of DLC's contact centers.

I led the design and research of this reordering experience, collaborating with the design manager, content strategist, information architect, and product manager. Moving forward, I will continue to work closely with two developers and seek stakeholder approval to prepare for launch by the end of 2024.

My role: Lead product designer

Duration: June - now

Team:

1 PM

2 Developers

1 Design manager

Tools: Figma, Mural

The problem

The medical supplies reordering tool is currently facing several challenges. Users are frequently abandoning the tool mid-task, leading to low customer satisfaction scores. Additionally, a recent audit revealed significant accessibility barriers that hinder the tool's usability. The tool has not been updated in over four years, contributing to misalignment with the current design system.

The goal

The goal is to identify and solve the root causes of tool abandonment and low customer satisfaction, as well as evolving user needs, to redesign the tool to improve its usability and increase successful supply order submissions.

My process

Understand

Conduct a usability study to identify pain points and areas for improvement.

Pull analytics data to gain insights into user interactions and identify trends in abandonment and error rates.

Hold meetings with key stakeholders to gather information on medical supplies reordering process from the providers and distribution center perspectives.

Ideate

Prototype

Understand

Stakeholders meetings

I interviewed with our stakeholders to understand the clinical and business knowledge, and usability of the tool, how order submissions on

VA.gov⁠

transmit to our stakeholders’ order system. Their knowledge is helpful for when we redesign the tool, I know what’s feasible to change and what’s not as well what data is available and useful to display for users.

⁠

⁠

View zoomed in version of the service blue print⁠

⁠

Analytics

I looked at performance indicators, such as how many Veterans successfully submit an order, as well as satisfaction scores with Veterans’ feedback on low scores.

In September 2024, 79% of users who responded to the survey selected 1s and 2s out of 5 as satisfaction rating, which is low. 23.4% of users who started the reordering form and made it to the order confirmation page. There was a 58.9% abandonment rate at the first page of the form, and 38% abandonment rate at the “verify address” page of the form.

Here are some quotes from users who left low satisfaction score:

“Can not order CPAP supplies. Site stuck on info page of address and email even though filled out properly.”

“Says I can't order because it hasn't been 5 months. Odd? I haven't ordered online, and I haven't ordered any

CPAP supplies for well over a year."

"Why did the system require a temporary address when all I needed to do was sent it to my permanent address?"

"Trying to order wax traps for my hearing aids. Told my records can not be found. Why? I've ordered them before with no problems."

Usability study

I led and conducted a usability study. The goals are to better understand how Veterans currently order and re-order medical supplies and to evaluate if the current digital form on VA.gov is user-friendly and easy to understand for Veterans. We found that:

All participants mentioned having notes, doing mental checks, or checking inventories to track when they need to reorder supplies.

How to apply (landing) page: Most participants (6 out of 9) clicked on the "Order hearing aid batteries and accessories online" link quickly without reading other information on the page.

Instruction page with sign-in button: Most participants (7 out of 9) skipped instructions and wanted to sign in right away.

Step 1 Verify personal information and address: Even though no one was confused about the meaning of permanent address and temporary address, some participants (5 out of 9) showed confusion when they realized that they needed to fill in or edit their permanent address.

All participants are able to finish the order of a hearing aid task, and most participants (7 out of 9) gave a score of 4 and 5 for overall use experience, with 1 being the hardest and 5 being the easiest.

See annotations below for usability issues identified in the research, inconsistencies with the current design system, and areas where could be improved and simplified for ease of use.

⁠

Ideate

Based on all the information I found in the section above, I started brainstorming and sketching out ideas for an improved supplies reordering flow while fixing the identified usability issues. Also, there are a couple of external factors I need to think about: What improvements our team should prioritize for the tool and when we should aim to launch the improvements, which led me to this question:

What can I design and launch in the next couple of months that can make the most impact for our stakeholders and users while aligning the design of the tool to the
form template in the VA’s design system⁠
?

The current form template is originally designed for benefits application forms, so lots of elements don’t apply to medical supplies reordering tool. In order to prove that this tool doesn’t need to follow form template, I will need to go through a length approval process, which may not be the best use of time considering critical usability issues that prevents users from ordering supplies. So, I communicated my decisions and reasonings to the team and design manager, and we collectively decided to improve the usability of the form first, then make it better at a later stage. This approach allows us to quickly resolve pressing user experience issues and improve the overall success of the tool.

I evaluated the current user flow for reordering medical supplies - log in - verify personal information - verify contact - select supplies- review- confirmation.

⁠

Current reordering flow

Current reordering flow

⁠

Users should be able to see what their available supplies and unavailable supplies are after they log in. From the usability study, a participant mentioned that they wanted to see and order their supplies right away. Once users already logged in and verified their account, verifying personal information is not helpful and unnecessary. Address page was confusing. From talking with our stakeholders, based on their data, changing addresses and editing addresses were not common. We should let users review and verify their addresses first, and provide editing functionality if they need. Therefore, I iterated the user flow.

⁠

Updated reordering flow with changes

Updated reordering flow with changes

⁠

Prototype

Introduction page

⁠

⁠

Step 1: Select supplies

⁠

⁠

Step 2: Contact information

⁠

⁠

Step 3: Review order details

⁠

⁠

Next steps

Given the urgency of fixing the tool to enable users to order necessary supplies and to help our stakeholders save time and resources on processing orders via phone and email, we will prioritize launching the updates before testing with our users. I’m currently collaborating with the development team to ensure a successful launch of all updates.

Stay tuned for updates on how this project enhances usability and boosts user satisfaction!

Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.

Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (

CtrlP

) instead.