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Org + Personas is a design research project to understand different organization and personas involved in healthcare ecosystem
The purpose of this exercise was to understand and document the organization and users in the healthcare
ecosystem. Being a UX design team, we wanted to educate and evangelize user centered approach for Edifecs product design so that user research becomes an integral part of design process.
The plan was to slowly build into establishing a strong research base for products by:
1. Tapping into the existing knowledge about various healthcare related organizations and personas
2. Mapping various orgs and personas based on Edifecs customer base
3. Identifying and documenting new models (like Accountable Care Org) that is creating newer orgs and personas.
1. User Role Mapping
I started the process by interviewing 4 designers within our team to acquire knowledge about the healthcare ecosystem.
Followed up with them to document and revise the findings. While doing this, I reffered online resources to do secondary research. At the end of this activity, I was able to create a high-level structure of payer org. with main departments and important roles associated with each department.
2. Brainstorming
Next, I interviewed 3 Product Managers to determine the structure of payer organization.
I conducted brainstorming session with each of them to understand inter-dependencies between various departments. I could document the primary responsibilities of each department and workflows of important tasks (such as taking care of patient claims). This was an extremely productive exercise for understanding the complicated payer org. processes and where our Edifecs products fit in.
3. Whiteboarding
One observation I had while brainstorming with different PM’s is that each of them had slightly different understanding of the org. structure. Therefore, it was important that they all have a common whiteboarding session to come to agreements with payer org. structure, their departments and their functionalities.
I arranged for one such where I displayed different variations of department description on the whiteboard and initiated the discussion.
1. Org Poster
A large sized payer organization poster was made with department, sub-departments and their functionalities for reference.
Poster link: here
2. Department Poster
I created a EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) department poster within payer org. with sub departments and personas.
Poster link: here
3. Persona
I created a sample persona of EDI analyst with all the details related to the role for reference.
Poster link: here
With the help of my manager/reviewer, I prepared a proposal deck to the Edifecs leadership team with an intention to make ‘user research’ integral part of the product design process. It had explanation of the importance of user research specifically in Edifecs context. It also described the user research process and the portrayal of the overall vision and approach at Edifecs.
The work on other department posters and provider org. poster was put on hold due to organizational changes.
Org + Personas was my first full-fledged research project at Edifecs. It required me to drive the effort from scratch and advocate user research within the company. Edifecs is primarily an engineering company. It doesn’t invest a lot on user research. So, my goal was to make PM’s understand and invest time and money into researching for the product they were building for customers.
While the goal was exciting, process was equally tedious. I had to pay attention to the details during interviews, ask relevant questions and later document the findings by listening to recordings. It was easy to loose the direction for next steps. So, getting the work reviewed by external designer really helped. It was also hard to keep up with the same level of enthusiasm while working on it as project got more and more complicated. Taking a break was essential. I believe for this project, bigger team could have helped. Overall, the journey taught me to be patient, focussed and optimistic about the goal.