product design: 

service design: 

  Kessel Run USAF

visiting dentistry

Finding them:

I collaborated with customer engagement teams, subject matter experts (SMEs) and active duty service members to locate users and initiate contact. 

Understanding their work:

Without a security clearance it can be difficult to get a detailed understanding of a warfighter’s work.

Virtudent told our UX design team about two main issues:

1. By the time patients are seen at their offices by hygienists, many have not completed the pre-requisite paperwork. This disrupts the schedule of cleanings. 

2. Many patients are not actually completing the booking of an appointment using the online system. This leads to missed appointments, lost revenue, and patient attrition.

In an UNCLASS environment I ask about:

• Previous duty stations and roles in the Air Force
• Training for their past and current roles
  • What was great? What sucked? Why?
• Tools they currently use to complete the job
  • What about pen/paper? Whiteboards?
• Benefits and pains in the current process to complete the job
• Upstream and downstream roles affecting / affected by their job

Getting to know the company: 
• Meetings with 5 senior stakeholders to learn about their goals and needs. 
• Interviews with 4 current patients and 4 prospective patients to hear their journeys with the patient intake system.
• Learned about business initiatives that were not apparent from the website.

In a CLASSIFIED environment I ask for or about:

• Specific aspects of a workflow process
• Demo of their current software tool usage
• Examples of real artifacts produced
• A contextual inquiry / shadowing day to experience the job from their point of view.

Study the current system.
The existing online appointment booking system begins with a link patients receive from their employers which takes them to a specific URL, then leads them into a HIPAA-compliant iFrame for 6 forms of health information, and back to the Virtudent website requesting payment in a pop-up window. 

Developing a solid relationship with users off the bat is essential to developing an Air Force product because there are a limited number of users at each Air Operations Center, and active duty warfighters will rotate out to a different duty station at pre-determined intervals.

Working with the feedback.
Feedback highlighted that 4 main categories of the booking process led to customers having an untrustworthy and cumbersome experience:
• Unclear messaging and CTAs
• Repetitive requests for information
• Ability to save and return 
• Payment method and payment security

I facilitate relationships that lead to:

• A regular feedback cadence in which users are open, honest, and willing to provide feedback on concepts, sketches, prototypes, and in-prod software 
• A smooth transition and introduction to the incoming warfighter at the end of a user’s tour of duty

Working with the feedback.
Feedback highlighted that 4 main categories of the booking process led to customers having an untrustworthy and cumbersome experience:
• Unclear messaging and CTAs
• Repetitive requests for information
• Ability to save and return 
• Payment method and payment security

The construct and mindset of the “orders”-based military life (and the emphasis on strict protocols therein) can make some prospective users reluctant to speak critically of current processes, and/or less easily grasp possibilities that stray from prescribed methods. 

I meet and succeed in these challenges by:

• Being approachable, easy-going, curious, respectful, and flexible
• Learning the complexities of their role and its context in order to be genuinely empathetic
• Using the "magic wand" question to help invigorate a warfighter's created mindset
• Demonstrating how their feedback gets incorporated and why it's so valued  

After presenting a report of patient insights to Virtudent stakeholders, we learned from them that the area we identified that would have the greatest impact of improving the customer experience (the iFrame) was outside the scope of Virtudent's directives.

We revisited the previous scope discussion about perceived inflexibility within the iFrame. We had discovered changes are possible, as a result of comparative analysis with another dental company using the same iFrame.

Virtudent said that they would consider changes to the iFrame at a later phase.