Executive Summary

Our capstone project was a redesign of the Find a Location feature on the UW Medicine webpages. With 4 hospitals and over 300 clinic locations, which all have their own webpage, the experience of finding the information that patients are looking for is far from ideal. UW Medicine wanted us to make the act of searching for care accessible, simple, and stress-free. We utilized human centered design methodologies to answer our guiding design question of  “How might we redesign the ‘Find a Location’ feature to optimize clarity and simplicity for patients of all technical and medical knowledge levels?” by designing:

1. A new plain language search system to lower barriers to access to care.

2. A new map search result system to provide better user understanding of the care available to them.

3. A new template for location pages that expands user understanding of a single location and can be customized to hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, and any relevant offices.

Capstone is a graduation requirement for the B.S. Human Centered Design and Engineering degree at UW. For 20 weeks, teams of four graduating students are paired with a sponsor in order to solve a problem for them through design. The entire project is student-designed and student-led, with teams spending the first ten weeks planning and proposing their ideas, and the last ten weeks actively researching and designing. 

The Locationologists was composed of four graduating B.S. HCDE students: Daniel Gao, Carly Minow, Borui Wang, and Congyi Zhu. This process book recounts all of our activities and insights from our four work phases which occurred over ten weeks and consisted of the following: 

• Phase 1: Research (competitive analysis, field study, initial user testing, and data analysis).

• Phase 2: Ideation (design requirements, new user flows, information architecture, and UI drafting).

• Phase 3: Low Fidelity Prototyping (wireframing, low fidelity prototyping, user testing, and data analysis and iteration).

• Phase 4: High Fidelity Prototyping (high fidelity prototyping, design system, expert evaluation, and presentation).

Our redesign empowers patients with intuitive and accessible digital navigation, prepares them for their in-person experience, and ensures a seamless journey to find the right care.