Digitalising green health for play therapy at hospitals
Overview
Challenge
The client, a non-profit biodiversity organisation, needed a digital solution to bring parts of their physical park experiences and educational material to teenagers visiting the play therapy sessions at local hospitals.
My role
UX Lead, responsible for leading the design process.
Project time
1 year and 6 months.
Defining project fundamentals
The project started with a full-day brainstorming workshop with the client to gather initial ideas and questions about green health. I collected the ideas in a Miro board and clustered similar ideas in descriptive categories, workshop participants then voted on categories to proceed with. We also defined the intended target audience during the exercise.
The workshop resulted in:
A well-defined target audience focused on teenagers who have had experiences with longer hospital visits.
Prioritised project objectives, focused on mitigating negative aspects of hospital visits for teenagers.
Several ideas for an MVP to iterate on were narrowed down by voting together with the client.
Categories with their respective votes, green dots are client representatives and blue dots are the development team.
Researching representative users and the contextual environment
We used surveys to gather quantitative data on the behavioral aspects of the target audience. Later on, we used user interviews and empathy mapping to gather qualitative data on the emotional aspects of the target audience. Also, we did a market analysis and secondary research to understand the contextual environment’s limitations better.
Examples of survey questions asked were:
How much time do you spend on outdoor activities?
Examples of interview questions asked were:
What do you feel is missing when it comes to hospital experiences?
Data gathered from questionnaire and user interviews.
Empathy mapping to gain an emotional understanding for the target audience in the contextual environment.
Analysing and summarising gathered data
The gathered data was sorted and reviewed within the design team to construct insights on the target audience’s needs, existing problems located within the contextual environment, and existing applicable design solutions. The insights were then converted to “how might we” questions to make it easier to ideate possible solutions.
Key insights:
The standard for improving the hospital experience with the help of nature was very low.
Using digitalized nature experiences to increase well-being at hospitals was interpreted as a valid way forward.
A combination of interactive elements in the concept is preferred by the target audience.
Defined insights from surveys, user interviews, and secondary research.
Value proposition and wireframing
With our insights we created a value proposition to ensure our initial ideas reflected the user needs. We also conceptualized several solutions for an MVP, focusing on the core needs, problems, and ambitions of the target audience.
Value proposition for Nordens Ark and their intended target audience.
Functionality mapping of the MVP.
Increasing branded fidelity and conducting usability testing
When we decided on the concept to proceed with, we increased the fidelity of the designs to be used for usability testing. I performed usability testing during a physical park visit at Nordens Ark with a larger audience to reflect on and improve the prototype’s usability.
Baseline moodboard for the MVP concept.
Usability tests at Nordens Ark during their spring fair.
Acting on feedback and finalising deliverable
With the feedback gathered during the usability testing, we acted on the most frequented responses on improvements.
Key takeaways from the usability tests:
The younger participants thought the text snippets were difficult to understand.
A majority of the participants got confused with certain clickable interactions and scrollable areas.
Participants liked the concept and thought the content was enlightening.
Findings from the usability tests at Nordens Ark.
Results
After several iterations, the final design was implemented by the development team. The resulting responsive web application is used at several hospitals to bring Nordens Ark’s expertise in biodiversity to play therapies in a fun and encouraging trans-medial format. The project also helped Nordens Ark gain funding for this digital experience.
Screens from the final design.
“We’ve learned so much from working with William, discovering the needs of our intended audience and how we can approach them with digital products”
— Client representative, Nordens Ark
Learnings
Working with representative users throughout the whole design process helps in making sure the deliverables are feasible at all stages.
Starting with a de-brief together with the client helps in understanding the various ways to approach a somewhat undefined focus area.
Convert discovered problems to solvable “how might we” questions to make it easier to ideate from.
More case studies
-
Using rapid prototyping to create a project planning system for an engineering firm
Rapid prototyping, UX/UI design, Interaction design
-
Develop a content management system for a well-established ferry operator
UX research, UX/UI design, Service design