Summary
The Lantum app was built originally to be used by locum doctors to help them find GP shifts in a marketplace. Lantum wanted to expand their user base into hospitals, focusing on the needs of clinicians. This expansion and new user group necessitated a redesign of the app to eliminate irrelevant shift information and streamline the different shift views so they were better suited to hospital clinicians.
The Problem
One of the key clinician user problems we identified during our research on how hospital clinicians interact with the rota was:
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As a clinician, I want to see when I’m working.
Within this, there are several use cases:
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I want to review a longer period of time at a glance (for example when checking overall availability or when reviewing a new rotation’s rota)
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I want to see the details of when I’m working
The original Lantum app currently didn’t solve this very well as it was built for the original GP user group, and doesn’t include the correct shift information for hospital clinicians. We know this as we had user feedback last year from clinicians as to why they don’t use the Lantum app which highlighted this particular point.
The Solution
I designed a new version of the app for hospital clinicians including multiple UX and UI enhancements. I streamlined information on the shift view to highlight key information for clinicians. I redesigned the original schedule view to improve the UI and split it into two different views. I also added a night shift colour to indicate the difference between night and day shift.
Discover
We already had existing research which highlighted hospital clinicians’ need for a clear view of their schedule and relevant details of their shifts. As we had an existing app to work with, I made a prototype featuring some key changes I thought would be of use to clinicians. As we also had an overall company aim to improve clinician engagement on the app, we wanted to do more targeted research with clinicians. My Product Manager and I then conducted 5 user interviews with clinicians, investigating their user behaviour regarding their working schedule.
This user interview was followed by user testing of the prototype to gather some initial feedback.
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The prototype offered a different layout of key shift information, a clear split between a monthly and weekly overview and the ability to customise the colour of your own shift and a change of night shifts to blue.
Research insights:
Clinician rota experience:
When a clinician first views a new rota, they are primarily looking for:
How many nights will I work and which?
How many weekends and which?
Overall working pattern:
“I’m looking for where am I working, where are my gap days, where is good for me to take annual leave - can take things off tactically and get a few days off alongside rest days to create a longer number of days. I might have weddings/commitments but some decisions will depend on the shift patterns." - user tester
Based on our user testing, we found users preferred a month overview of their rota as it made it easier to see shift patterns and working weekends. Some clinicians also like to take a look at the week ahead, including checking who they will be working with, to gauge what the working week will bring and mentally prepare for how hard the workload will be.
Night shifts:
The research showed seeing night shifts at first glance is important to clinicians with all interviewees mentioning this. They need the easy view of night shifts on their calendar because these shifts require forward planning such as sleeping in preparation and rearranging social events.
“I would look up the frequency of night shifts. Whether I’m working bank holidays - especially during Christmas - want to know if you’re on the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ rota." - user tester
During rotation:
On a regular day they might consult the rota for the following use cases:
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To see who else is working
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To understand who may be available for shift swaps
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To see when and where they are working / duties
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To see what would be a good time to take tactical leave (to maximise days off in a row with minimal use of leave days
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To understand when would be a good time to plan personal events
Develop
With these aims in mind I refined the designs further. I explored various solutions and versions of what to include on the shift details page, adding features that would be useful to clinicians like shift data and a list view of who else was working. I ultimately decided to highlight key shift information on the shift details page, as well as links to our other prominent features on the app via the page, booking leave, swapping a shift and seeing who is working.
We took the insights from our research and I used them to refine the app designs further, we focused on the central problem that hospital clinicians wanted to see when they were were working and have a clear view of their schedule. After the research and testing I removed some elements that didn’t seem to offer a solution to our user problem and was able to prioritise designs that addressed the problem now, and which nice to have elements could be added later. I found that the week view was less important to users, so we could retain a scrolling month view and users could choose to view by week or month. I also found the option to customise by colour was useful but perhaps not a key issue to address at this point. As highlighted in the research, the key areas to focus on were clear shift information available at a glance and the ability to view night shifts easily.
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Define
Deliver
I also made gifs to advertise the new improvements to the app as in app messages.
I produced a full redesign of the app for clinicians, taking into account the myriad of different shift types which needed to be redesigned to include relevant information for this user group. I created a final state figma file with detailed and annotated designs for each shift type and states. I worked with the PM and engineers over multiple sprints to help with implementing these designs and offered alternatives and tweaks to designs when their were technical limitations. Below is an indication of before and after on the app.
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Impact
These redesigned pages along with the who's working page (see case study) became the most used features on the app. Use of the app increased from an average of 1000 user sessions per month to 9000 after the launch of these improvements. We also received glowing praise from clinicians via their whatsapp chats.
Learnings
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Working to brief : We had a key user need defined for this brief which was so straightforward to work towards. My main struggle was wanting to add in additional features which I assumed would be useful but were not a priority at the time. The ability to see data for your shifts you’ve worked this month, or ability to customise individual shifts by colour are still ideas in the ‘nice to have’ pile I would love to look into further.
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Working iteratively: I worked with a great team of engineers who helped me break the designs down piece by piece and implemented them in the way they deemed most efficient. This meant a lot of the UI changes didn’t happen straight away but were implemented over time. It was great to gain an insight into the technical limitations and their iterative way of working.
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