Helping Hand
A healthcare provider connection website focused on connection users to providers that align with their specific needs such as insurance acceptance, location preferences, and provider ratings.
My Role
• Project Founder
• Journey Map
• Workflow
• Information Architecture
• Wireframes
• Design Language System Implementation
• User Testing Preparation
• User Testing Script
• Final Prototype
Team
Yesenia Garcia, Masaki Jedabah, Crystal Le, Eva Danzler, Emma DeCapo
Tools
Figma, Figjam, Google Docs/Sheets, Microsoft Powerpoint
Timeline
2 weeks | Jan 13 – Nov 25
Overview
HelpingHand: A healthcare provider connection website
As a response to the struggle that surrounds being able to efficiently and immediately find healthcare providers that align with one's needs, our team of five University of Austin School of Integrated Design + Undergraduate students designed Helping Hand as a website where users can input their necessary healthcare information such as insurance acceptance and specialty and see physician gender and ratings.
Problem Statement
Getting access to necessary healthcare providers is already hard enough, but to find one that aligns with patients needs to avoid them from "compromising" is a whole other challenge!
The process of discovering the right healthcare provider to:
• eliminate having to go through uncomfortable experiences or provider switching can result in extensive online research
• avoid holding on phone calls just to discover one's insurance isn't taken, and overall unnecessary stress.
How can individuals find all of the possible healthcare provider options all in one place that fit their needs in order to compare and contact in order to make a more informed and assured decision in a timely manner?
Why should we care about this?
According to the Harvard Business Review, millions of Americans struggle with discovering primary healthcare in a seamless and immediate manner.
Urban Institute discovered that more than 1 in 7 adults with health insurance had issues finding a provider who would see them in a timely manner.
KFF notes that nearly 6 in 10 people with health insurance experienced a problem using their insurance in the past year.
Solution
A personalized healthcare provider connection website
Onboarding
The sign up process and profile page allows users to input their personal preferences and information in order to best align them with healthcare providers that meet their needs as they store necessary information for convenient and immediate accessibility.
Finding A Provider
The "Find A Provider" is the heart & purpose of HelpingHand and allows users to discover their healthcare provider match through "Search" or "Browse". Search allows users to search for their specific types of healthcare plan they are looking for through key words or features whereas Browse allows users to discover types of providers based on factors such as their specialty, location, or insurance type.
Medication Resources
Along with the struggle of finding the right healthcare providers all in one place, we also understood how being able to find all possible medication options can be a struggle as well. Therefore we added a "Medication Resources" page where users can compare different brands and prices of a medication as well as their insurance coverage for easier medication accessibility.
Contact a Person!
Like many organizations that value a more personalized perspective, this page/feature allows users to contact the representatives in order to get immediate help on their specific questions, sharing with the values and principles of the website.
Process
Okay but wait... how did we get here?
Journey Step
Contextual Inquiry
Solution Synthesis
Stakeholder Map
Information Architecture
+ Wireframing
Competitive/Comparative Analysis
+ Completed Calculator
Hi-fi Prototype to Ready Prototype
Final deliverable
User Testing
Design Language Preparation
User Storyboarding + Preparation
Why Prototype
Next Steps
Journey Map
Our persona, Kaylee, wasn't struggling to find providers, she was struggling to confidently compare and evaluate them!
Our first question to understand the end-to-end experience of finding healthcare providers and identify where users experienced the most friction. Through our persona, Kaylee, her journey revealed that information was scattered across multiple websites, requiring users to repeatedly cross-reference insurance networks, provider reviews, and medication coverage resources.
Key Insight —
Users often didn't know where to begin their search.
Key Insight —
Comparing providers required visiting multiple disconnected websites.
Key Insight —
Insurance information was difficult to verify and understand.
Users needed a single place to compare providers, verify insurance compatibility, and feel confident making healthcare decisions.
Workflow
This shifted our focus from simply helping users search for providers, to helping them evaluate providers and related healthcare information in one place.
After getting a good idea of who we are designing for, we set out to define an ideal path users could follow to address the pain points uncovered in the journey map and that reduced unnecessary research and context switching. When mapping the workflow, we noticed that users repeatedly performed the same mental task: collecting information from different sources and comparing it before making a decision.
• Kaylee doesn't have to track excessive amounts of information with different methods to single out the address, rating, what you can expect, and others. She has clarity and transparency on what all looks like: Insurance such as to set specific PCPs, Inlines, or specialists to discover if they, for example, take new patients (Kaylee).
To support these connected tasks, we needed a structure that organized information clearly and reduced navigation complexity, which led to creating our information architecture.
Information Architecture
How can we organize content and functionality in a way that matched how users think about their healthcare decisions?
Our early architecture explorations revealed that users weren't thinking in terms of isolated website sections. Instead, they viewed healthcare decisions as connected process: finding providers, Insurance Coverage, medications, and support resources.
Through defining and ideating, we quickly learned 2 things:
1. Grouping information around user goals rather than system categories made the experience easier to understand.
2. Provider comparison and medication cost information needed to be surfaced earlier in the experience because they were key decision-making factors.
Wireframes
The finalized architecture helped determine the key of our design, which was strategizing what information users would encounter first within the prototype.
As we translated our information architecture into visuals, fidelity experiences to test the visual flow before investing in visual design, our goal was first on optimizing how users would move between onboarding, provider search, medication research, and support features as we knew the key usability of our solution rested on the clear progression between steps and immediate access to the information most relevant to the users' decision-making process.
User Stories / Requirements
Once the core flows felt coherent, we documented detailed user requirements to ensure the experience addressed both user needs and project goals.
Through writing the functional and user requirements necessary for the platform from the perspective of the user to successfully support healthcare decision-making, we examined the ways in which to provide provider selection depends on more than search functionality. Users require sufficient context to evaluate their options and make informed choices. These requirements became the benchmark used to evaluate future design decisions and informed the design language system used throughout the interface.
Design Language System · User Testing Preparation
What did our users have to say about our method for filling their needs?
Healthcare information can quickly feel overwhelming, but our design language system, we constructed design system of consistent layouts, typography and component behavior to help make complex information look approachable and easier to scan, providing light, clean, and refreshing theme that simultaneously guides the user to what actions their attention should be drawn to and what they currently need to interact with.
Example: Apply Design Language System to Wireframes → Apply annotations/commentary relative to user testing.
Competitive / Comparative Experience Evaluation
Now taking a step back and looking at our website, who seems to be our main competitor? What have they done well and where did they lack?
In order to better inform our own design, we decided to look at how existing healthcare platforms solve similar problems and identify opportunities for differentiation. In seeing the ways in which competitors performed well in specific areas such as provider search, appointment booking, and information presentation, we wanted to ensure that we weren't going to get completely over our expectations for healthcare platforms. Rather than surveying familiar patterns, we focused on giving information accessibility and reducing the effort required to compare options.
Audit
Zocdoc
+ Strong insurance filtering and booking flow
+ Clear provider profiles with ratings and reviews
− No medication cost comparison or transparency
− Limited support resources beyond appointments
GoodRx
+ Excellent medication pricing and comparison
+ Pharmacy location integration
− No provider search or appointment booking
− Isolated from the broader healthcare navigation process
User Testing & Results
What did our users have to say about our method for filling their needs?
We finalized evaluative prototypes to run by 3 potential users by utilizing a "Think Aloud" protocol. By doing this, we can get an idea of what the user is seeking, understanding, and thinking in real time. By the end of our test, participants quite generally were able to navigate the prototype and understood the platform's core purpose. However, no distinct issues surfaced, and an initial testing validated that the overall direction was useful and intuitive, so we set out to correct friction that did arise:
• Some users expected profile completion to occur earlier.
• Users wanted more explicit guidance during certain tasks.
• A few interface controls lacked sufficient clarity.
User Testing Script
Results Summary
Final Prototype
The findings directly informed revisions to navigation labels, profile setup flows, instructional content, and supporting interface details.
Based on testing insights, we:
• Clarified provider discovery terminology.
• Refined onboarding and profile completion flows.
• Added more guidance throughout key tasks.
• Refined interface interactions and navigation patterns.
• Expanded healthcare information available to users.
HelpingHand
The final prototype brought provider discovery, medication research, and healthcare support into a more unified experience, reducing the effort required for users to gather and evaluate information.
Reflection & Next Steps
Designing for confidence, not just discovery
Early research showed that finding providers wasn't the primary challenge. Users needed enough information to confidently choose between providers, which shaped many of our design decisions.
Healthcare decisions involve connected systems
Provider search, insurance coverage, medication affordability, and support resources all influence one another. Designing these experiences in isolation would have created unnecessary friction.
Users don't think in products, they think in outcomes
We learned that users weren't focused on tasks like provider search or medication research. They simply wanted to make confident healthcare decisions, which reinforced the importance of designing in connected experiences rather than isolated features.
If given additional time, we would:
• Conduct testing with a larger and more diverse participant group.
• Explore more advanced provider comparison tools.
• Expand medication cost transparency features.
• Collaborate with healthcare professionals to further evaluate information accuracy and trust-building opportunities.