Tufts Health Services
Improving Tufts health services via website redesign
🚩 Problem
Students heavily distrust university provided health services. As a result, students avoid receiving care at school.
🥅 Goal
Understand student grievances with current university resources and their digital health seeking behaviors to improve the health services.
💡 Outcome
Build trust between Tufts Health Services and the student body by creating one website that centralizes medical resources.
Synopsis
Over the course of 4 months, I worked independently to redesign the Tufts University Heath Services website for my graduate coursework. The research goal was to increase the availability of trustworthy health resources for students across all four campuses. I conducted research using in-depth interviews (IDIs), heuristic evaluations, and competitive analysis, synthesized recommendations using a SWOT analysis, and designed personas, site maps, and high-fidelity wireframes based in research insights.
BEFORE
PROTOTYPE
FINAL SITE
📝 Process
Understand the Background
I conducted a literature review to evaluate the current state of all four Tufts Health Services’ websites. I reviewed the site architecture, user interface, and content of the websites and defined two major areas for improvement:
#1 Gaps in relevant content and information
No information on medical services offered on-campus/off-campus
Lacked targeted information for student population segments
Poor site SEO: only 1 of 4 websites show up on the main page of search results for multiple search engines
#2 Usability issues impacted site traffic
Disorganized and hard to follow site flow
Irrelevant imagery, logos, buttons
Lacks of cohesive branding across all four sites
Missing or hard to find information eg. medical forms, clinic hours
Website 1 Tufts University
Website 3 School at the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA)
Website 2 Tufts School of Medicine (TUSM)
Website 4 Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine
Conduct Primary Research
Method 1
I conducted in-depth interviews (IDIs) with 10 students across four campuses to understand their grievances with health services website.
I chose IDIs due to time and budget constraints and because I needed to ask open-ended questions to uncover cause of behavior.
I developed a discussion guide that focusing on understanding user behavior and sentiment around accessing Health Services resources.
I recruited subjects for my study by leveraging my existing network, my professors, and stopping students on campus to volunteer to participate.
From my interviews, I learned:
Students use their phones more than other devices to access health information
Students prefer to make appointments online instead of calling
Each campus has unique population demographics that require targeted resources
Students have trouble navigating the health services websites to find key information/resources
Sample Interview Questions
How do you search for health information online? What devices do you use?
When do you normally access the campus health services website?
Walk me through how you would find “XYZ” form for me on the health services site
Method 2
I conducted a competitive analysis of other university health services websites to understand how our site could improve.
I compared our website to Harvard, Boston, and New York University; universities with similar locations, student body sizes and campuses.
I used these insights to complete a SWOT Analysis to understand the key opportunities and weaknesses that our new site would need to target.
From the competitive analysis and SWOT analysis I learned:
Website content needs to be organized, current, and relevant; urgent information should be immediately recognizable and placed above the fold
Site design should be simple to help key information stand out
Sites have poor user flow, no unifying branding, and lacked relevant imagery
Competitive Analysis Summary Chart
SWOT Analysis Summary
🧠 Synthesis
Communicate the Insights
Personas
Using the data from qualitative interviews and competitive analyses, I created four personas representing students from each campus. These personas helped understand the patterns in student behavior. Each persona outlined the student’s “trigger to use”, “initial use”, and “repeat use” of the Tufts Health Services website for their campus.
Search Term Optimization (SEO) Analysis
I conducted a SEO Analysis to understand pain points in student health seeking behaviors. I created search strings using phrases students mentioned in qualitative interviews. I ran searches on different search engines to understand how the Tufts sites would appear in the results. I learned that grad students students struggle to find their campus’ website.
💥 Impact
Create & Iterate Website Prototypes
I created low fidelity site map and designed wireframes using my research insights
I completed a heuristic evaluation and used the resulting insights to iterate upon site wireframes:
Update colors to increase readability and add variety
Create a more prominent location for updates and alerts
Add social media links to the footer as many students follow social media for campus healthcare updates
I merged the four separate health services websites into one cohesive site with unified branding. When prototyping, I developed an updated site inventory and site map that focused on improving three key elements:
Site Map
#2 Usability Elements
Focus on mobile friendly format
Develop an appointments scheduler
Place key information above the fold eg. emergency information, clinic hours, and clinic contact
Improve site SEO by adding key search phrases to website copy that students mentioned in interviews
#1 Essential Content Elements
Add info on how to receive care off-campus
Include insurance plans information, current address, hours, and contact information
Make essential forms easy to find and download eg. immunization, insurance waivers
Create clinician profiles that contains calendar of available appointments
#3 Visual Elements
Create Health Services logo
Add imagery of real health services locations eg. building, waiting room
Use Tufts branded colors across all sub-pages to created unified branding
Draft Home Page
Draft Sub Page “Above the Fold”
Draft Sub Page “Below the Fold”
Final Homepage Prototype
Final Sub Page “Above the Fold” Prototype
Final Sub Page “Below the Fold” Prototype
⏪ What would I do differently?
Next Steps
Immediate
Complete usability testing (moderated, structured card sorting) on the low-fi wireframes to learn how students navigate through the website
Create user flows from usability testing data and iterate upon product designs using insights from usability testing
Long-term
Conduct campus-wide survey to evaluate student opinions on the improved website eg. understand remaining gaps or successes
What would I change?
With More Time:
Complete additional competitive analyses to look at more schools and other factors that impact health resources on campus
Collect data on students visiting health services to more accurately segment the population and provide targeted resources to different types of students
Interview clinicians on the health services staff to understand what stands in the way of them providing students what they need
Increase the sample size of qualitative interviews or conduct focus groups
Expand the project scope to target key issues that could be solved outside of creating a website eg. developing further resources for the students