End-to-End Application
Fostering Peer Support and Wellbeing for Nurses Through Anonymous Connection
Masked, a mobile app designed to support nurses, fosters an online community where they can anonymously seek out advice and support when facing burnout, difficult patients, or other challenges. This platform fosters a safe space for nurses to connect and share experiences while being mindful of patient confidentiality.
In this case study, I will showcase the design process of the app from concept to completion.
My role
End-to-end UX Designer
Tools
Figma, Figjam, Miro
Timeline
2.5 weeks; 100 hours
Nurses are increasingly experiencing burnout and have inadequate support systems.
Before transitioning to UX design, I was a nurse struggling to find solace. The long hours, staff shortages, and systemic issues within hospitals intensified the emotional and physical toll on me and I wasn’t alone.
Nurses face a growing challenge: burnout. A 2020 American Nurse Association survey reports 62% of nurses experiencing burnout, with an even higher rate (69%) among younger nurses under 25. With strict confidentiality and privacy laws surrounding patient information, it is a challenge for nurses to openly discuss their work experiences or seek support from those who don’t share their healthcare background.
From witnessing the toll of COVID, I designed solutions to empower nurses for the future.
This project aims to create a platform for nurses, acting as a safe space for them to discuss challenges and find support from their peers anonymously while protecting patient privacy.
Identifying Opportunities for Differentiation
Fostering a safe and supportive environment for nurses was essential. To identify opportunities for Masked to stand out, I conducted a comprehensive competitor analysis. This analysis included both direct and indirect competitors.
Direct Competitor:
Allnurses: While Allnurses is a large and well-established platform, its UI is outdated and features supporting anonymity are limited, potentially discouraging open communication about sensitive topics.
Indirect Competitors:
Blind & Glassdoor: Analyzing platforms like Blind and Glassdoor, which cater to professionals seeking anonymous support and information sharing, highlighted the growing importance of user privacy in online communities. Recent incidents where user identities were compromised on Glassdoor emphasis on the need for strong anonymity features that are built with integrity.
Learning from Strengths & Weaknesses:
Established platforms like Reddit (supportive subreddits) and Blind informed the design of Masked's successful anonymity features. This competitor analysis also revealed opportunities to tailor the user experience for nurses seeking secure and anonymous support from other nurses.
The Power of Listening: Validating Assumptions & Unforeseen Opportunities
Interviews with 5 registered nurses (aged 25-34) validated my assumptions that nurses don’t feel the same therapeutic effects talking to non-healthcare individuals as talking to nurses. But, I also uncovered surprising insights that significantly impacted my future design decisions: nurses (especially men) have a fear of being viewed as weak or incompetent by talking about their work problems.
Here are the main insights I gathered after affinity mapping.
Insights from user interviews revealed a lot of similarities among nurses regarding their needs and challenges. However, a particularly impactful finding was that male nurses often expressed a reluctance to discuss work-related difficulties with loved ones, fearing judgment or appearing weak. To address this distinct need and capture the specific experiences of male nurses, I opted to create two separate personas.
User Persona Development
Mapping User Journey
Having been in the users’ shoes, it was still important to ensure stakeholders and team members had a shared understanding about the users needs, obstacles, and emotions. I combined the perspectives of the 2 personas to provide a more concise tool to highlight needs and pain points.
By creating a user journey, I was able to provide a clear visual communication tool to narrate the users’ goals and how we can achieve them.
Prioritizing Features for the MVP
With a limited timeframe of 100 hours, prioritizing features for the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) was crucial. To ensure the MVP delivered the most value, I implemented a prioritization framework that considered three key factors:
01
Features like personalized feeds and search functions were prioritized to ensure users would encounter relevant content and facilitate finding shared interests and experiences in a community of vast backgrounds.
User Goals:
02
Content moderation was prioritized to maintain a positive user experience and brand image, and to protect Protected Health Information (PHI) to ensure users maintain compliance with HIPAA (federal law protecting PHI)
Business goals:
03
Nurse verification and anonymous account creation were included due to the technical feasibility and potential to build user-user trust, allowing nurses to talk to nurses, not bots/spam!
Technical considerations:
Mapping the User Flow
For the initial product stage, I created user flows for the account creation and onboarding experience, and search function with the least amount of required input as possible. The focus on the sign up and onboarding process was to emphasize user anonymity and verification to build trust with users, and offer options to customize feed based on their nursing specialty/interests, but to simplify it as much as possible.
A Visual Guide of the Information Architecture
Site maps gave me a clear picture of the navigational hierarchy and the core functionalities of the app: starting from a logged-out state and progressing through potential user actions like logging in, signing up, and interacting with other features. With a structured site map, I was able to confidently design wireframes based on the user flows.
Wireframing & Prototyping
Though creating design systems and UI components are parts of the design process that I enjoy, it is still important for me to step back from the computer and sketch ideas. The beauty of pen and paper is the ability to brain dump ideas and iterate them quickly. Here are some sketches that reflect the “Must have” features:
With my sketches, I created mid-fi wireframes building out components and utilizing auto layout to streamline the design process. With the core functionality and layout in place this was ideal for user testing.
In the user testing, I focused on overall usability, onboarding experience, and nurse verification process to ensure users could access the platform without unnecessary hurdles. Additionally, I was able to discover user concerns about data privacy and the perceived level of security around their information.
Insights & Revisions from Mid-Fi Frames
Evaluating the Functionality and Visual Design: Hi-Fi Prototype
To further refine the design, I conducted high-fidelity user testing with 5 individuals. 4 of which were nurses who had previously evaluated the mid-fidelity wireframes, offering valuable continuity and insight into the evolution of the design. The final participant, a non-healthcare worker, provided a fresh perspective on the app’s functionality, ensuring the general usability for target users.
By utilizing moderated usability testing, I actively facilitated the session, gathering detailed feedback on user interactions, task completion efficiency, and overall design clarity.
Considerations:
A “hard stop” (a terminology frequently used in hospital settings to halt progression and review safety measures before conducting a procedure that could potentially cause harm to a patient) was implemented to alert users that content violates HIPAA or reveals their personal identity.
Character limit indicator taken out since users prefer to see a countdown if it is very limited like X/Twitter.
If time allowed, retest these iterations to ensure the changes improved usability and clarity of the design.
Building a Cohesive & Trustworthy Platform
To foster a unified and reliable experience, I built a design system to ensure visual consistency across the platform. The style tile, reflecting our core values, further reinforced this sense of trust. Additionally, user safety was prioritized through reporting tools and safeguards that warned against sharing personal information, allowing users to connect with each other safely and patient privacy to be protected.
Branding & Style Tile
The color palette reflected the brand values, with a focus on core values:
Professionalism
Integrity
Anonymity
Community
A clear and easy-to-read typeface was chosen for optimal text accessibility, particularly with the dark theme implementation. To ensure the text was accessible, I used the A11y plugin and was able to meet AAA color contrast requirements.
Design System for Efficiency & Consistency:
By utilizing a consistent set of components, the design system helped
Maintain a unified visual language that aligns with the brand values
Streamline the design process by creating “pre-built” components and styles
Facilitated future design scalability by creating a foundation for maintaining consistency as new features are added.
Balancing User Autonomy with Trust & Safety
A more significant challenge involved finding the right balance between user autonomy and safety enforced by the platform. User satisfaction and engagement thrive when users have a sense of control. However, within a healthcare context, user privacy and patient information protection are vital.
While nurses are trained to protect PHI, the platform itself should offer additional safeguards. To address this, I included:
01
Safeguards to detect and warn users of personal information in their content
Though AI and human moderators exist, it was important for both the nurses and the brand to hold their reputation for having integrity and protecting user and patient privacy.
Users are able to continue posting despite a warning, but risk getting their content deleted.
02
The report tool empowers users to flag inappropriate content, fostering a safe and professional environment. This familiar functionality mirrored reporting mechanisms on other platforms, ensuring ease of use and a smooth integration into the app's workflow.
Easy reporting tools for users to flag inappropriate content
Exploring Edge Cases: Examples and Solutions
Before stepping away from the final design process, I explored a few potential edge cases – situations where users might interact with the app in unexpected ways or encounter unusual data. This proactive approach helped identify potential design flaws and ensure the app could handle a wider range of user behaviors and scenarios.
Character limit:
Challenge: The initial design for a long text field included a progress bar to display character count. While intended to be informative, user testing revealed that the design pattern was not intuitive so I proposed a live character countdown from 20,000 characters.
Benefit: Some users appreciated the character counter, allowing them to easily track their character usage.
Drawback: Other users found the constant countdown would be visually distracting and overwhelming, especially when there were many characters remaining.
Solution:
When users begin entering text, the character count is hidden to minimize visual clutter and avoid unnecessary distraction while typing. As users approach the limit, the character count appears and displays the remaining characters.
Multiple AI Suggestions:
Challenge: With multiple suggestions presented, the user might experience confusion or a lack of control over their post. It was crucial to ensure the AI suggestions would help users make informed decisions, not control their content.
Solution:
Adaptive Feedback: Correcting 1 block of text in the same section or paragraph will reveal the next suggestion to reduce clutter and an overwhelming user experience.
User Control: Users retain ultimate decision-making authority, ensuring their voice and intended message are conveyed in their post.
Key Learnings and Future Considerations
This project highlighted the importance of competitor research, user research, user feedback, and even ethics in design. My background as a nurse provided invaluable insights throughout the design process and fueled my passion to create a solution that could make a real difference in nurses’ lives. This project proved to be a deeply rewarding journey, fostering both personal and professional growth as a designer— and I’m excited to continue using research to create solutions!
Continuous Learning
In an ideal world, I would have liked to
Conduct user interviews with nurses in a higher age group to ensure the design is inclusive and accessible for senior nurses too.
Consult and collaborate with developers to determine the feasibility of the nurse verification process.
Consider edge case earlier in the design stages to plan for a more robust user experience!
Utilize variables and advanced prototyping to better mimic the user experience and streamline my design file.
What’s Next:
Design new features like notifications, direct messages, and multimedia sharing to continue supporting the growth of the community and give nurses the tools they need to supplement their experience.
Consider developing a web version of the app like Reddit to increase accessibility.
