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Redesigning Hucu.ai's Messaging for a Seamless Clinician-Centered Experience

Over 1,000,000 messages have been exchanged to date, connecting thousands of users.

January 23, 2025 – 14min read

Introduction

Overview

Hucu.ai is a HIPAA-compliant platform that enables  AI-powered, patient-centered communication between patients and healthcare teams. With over 10,000 healthcare professionals and 130,000 active patients, HUCU.ai supports post-acute collaboration to improve care transitions.

Role

As a product designer, I led design initiatives and worked closely with a researcher, product managers, data analysts, developers, and customer success.

Challenges

Unify the Messaging Flow

Unify and improve the current messaging experience, making it consistent and easy to use throughout Hucu.ai.

Improve Engagement

Enhance engagement for clinicians using Hucu.ai as their primary patient communication tool.

Simplifying Navigation

Clinicians receive multiple notifications from patients. We aim to enable clinicians to navigate effortlessly from the notification center to messages.

Learn the detailed discovery process in the complete case study.

Discover

Conversations Analysis

Various Contexts

There is a lack of clear visibility in the system to indicate when or where new messages occur. Notifications are limited, and the chat is not bolded, making it difficult for medical staff to access essential messages.

Different Usage Patterns for Patients and Clinicians

One typical pattern we found is that clinicians sometimes send the same message to other patients. It is challenging for clinicians to track which reply is coming from which patient.

How Current UX Affects Customer Trust in Hucu.ai

Inefficient messaging UX led to missed critical patient updates, leading them to switch to another messaging application.

Discover

Customer Support Request Analysis(User Feedback) 

Struggling to Find Unread Messages

Users often lost messages and found it hard to follow threads, which frustrated them. Making sure messages stand out in the notification system is still a challenge.

Define

Key Customer Problems

Confusing and Hard-to-Use Messaging UX

The lack of a holistic design created confusion, leading to lost and unread messages.

Navigational Challenges

It's challenging for staff to navigate the notification system to find specific messages.

Customers Switching Platforms

Due to the patient-centred approach, medical staff missed critical messages about a patient, leading them to switch to another messaging application.

Dive into the complete case study for an in-depth view of the design strategy and principles guiding the design decisions.

develop

Low Fidelity

After gathering feedback from the team, I proceeded with one of the chosen design directions.

develop

Feedback from Developers and Leadership

Open the Reply Thread to the Right Side

We agreed that the user could open only one reply at a time to optimize the development effort in the first iteration.

Display Replies as New Messages

To enable the reply feature, display the main message in the reply with a hyperlink to the original thread where the conversation was initiated

Navigate to Replies via Notifications

This feature allows users to switch from notifications to message threads quickly and helps care teams easily switch between different facilities through the notification center.

develop

Low Fidelity

After receiving feedback from the team, I proceeded with one of the chosen design directions.

The EXECUTION

High-fidelity explorations

After finishing the low-fidelity step, I proceeded to the next step, designing a high-fidelity prototype and conducting UX studies on care teams.

In response to valuable feedback from clinicians during moderated usability testing, we have made several enhancements accordingly.

deliver

Enhancing the Clinician's Experience with a New Messaging Interface.

Following our design strategy, we implemented features to address the additional medical staff needs. These include receiving notifications for opening and closing flags, scheduling patient appointments with doctors, and quickly responding to critical alerts. Our goal is to help medical staff communicate with patients more effectively.

The Impact

Positive impact and good engagement

/01

2hrs/day

Saved by majority of clinicians
/02

91%

Experience increased care teams

Reflect

Outcome

Hucu.ai has exchanged more than 1,000,000 messages among thousands of users.

Thanks to my teammates’ hard work and passion, we improved key metrics and created a solid UX.

Learn more about how we overcome the challenges after release the 
feature in the article on medium

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