Lesson 9 of 10 lessons from building a user-friendly corona-app
The design process of the Dutch corona-app (CoronaMelder) was as user centered as it gets. During the project we did more than 25 tests with over 200 users. I had the honor to be part of the team. Together with my colleagues, I was responsible for collecting user insights and creating a simple, user-friendly app. One that everybody in the Netherlands can use.
Over the past months we have learned a lot and it would be a waste not to share our insights with the world. I hope other teams working on corona-apps can profit from them. I’m quite sure some of these lessons are universal and could apply to other (healthcare) apps as well.
If you’re working on corona-apps or (healthcare) apps in general, this article is for you.
I’ve summarized our most important lessons and give a few concrete tips for each insight. Enjoy the read!
Lesson #9: Take into account the entire ecosystem: app-users are not your only users
Corona apps are part of a larger ecosystem. When people test positive for the coronavirus, they get a call from health authorities for contact tracing. Somewhere during that call, the patient needs to be asked to share their codes using CoronaMelder. Making a decision about when this question should be asked is part of the design process as well.
It has to be super simple for professionals to walk through the process of uploading the codes. They should be supported in guiding the patient through the code-sharing process.
With CoronaMelder, the code-sharing process happens while the patient and health professional are on the phone. We’ve tested this process many times. We even did a test where both ends of the phone line were test subjects simultaneously: a real healthcare professional on one end, and a participant on the other end.
We learned, among other things, which instructions to include in the portal.
For example, it’s very important for the healthcare professional to ask the patient to switch to the speaker of the phone before asking the patient to switch to the app.
The app should also remind healthcare professionals to say that to the patient. To ensure this we incorporated that instruction into the portal. Also, we included screenshots of what the patient would see in their app while searching for the key, so the healthcare participant could talk the patient through the process.
Also, we included the answers to questions patients might ask about the app in the portal.
- [Advice] — Don’t forget to user test and design the back end. The backend is the side is used by healthcare professionals. The portal, too, should be super user-friendly. Help the professionals to help your users.
Read more
The article could have easily been called ‘148 lessons for people building corona-apps’. This is one of 10 lessons I selected and summarised. All our research findings are available on our public GitHub.
Through this process we developed a profound understanding of what works, and what doesn’t. Any questions? Want to learn from our mistakes, successes and experiences?
Get in touch! :)
The other lessons
- Lesson #1: Help people understand when they’ll receive a notification. Avoid visual references to maps and radars
- Lesson #2: Focus on the intended effect, instead of on the technical details
- Lesson #3: Privacy and (perceived) usefulness are key
- Lesson #4: Don’t give people the option to skip an explanation before asking for permissions
- Lesson #5: Any notification sent by the app will freak people out
- Lesson #6: The more details you give about a moment of contact, the more likely people are to take warnings seriously
- Lesson #7: The devil is in the details, small differences in text will have a huge impact
- Lesson #8: It doesn’t hurt to ask to share the app
- Lesson #9: Take into account the entire ecosystem: app-users are not your only users
- Lesson #10: Test early, test often
