Mindstrong: Getting to Care Faster
Project Background
In H1 of 2022, Mindstrong made a decision to allow members to self-schedule for sessions, marking a significant shift in their business model. Previously, the company only allowed members to schedule through the help of Care Partners via telephone.
This move not only expanded the potential member base but also provided greater access to mental health resources for those in need. As a result, the core functionality and offering of the app needed to be restructured to support this change.
Define
When thinking about how to even go about this project, I started to frame the problem and asked a lot of questions to understand what the constraints and requirements were.
Some questions that I asked myself, PMs, and engineers were, “How did our competitors or others solve this problem?”, “What solutions already exist?”, “What was our current user journey?”, even something specific like “How many days in advance can a new member schedule for a session?”, and
“How might we design for a simple user experience that meets our member needs?
Business Goals
Increase potential member base and numbers of scheduled sessions
Reduction in inefficient touch points as to allow members to schedule a new session when in need
Reduction of manually scheduling time and workload for our Care Partner team
Problems
Members had to wait for our Care Partner team to contact them back in order to schedule a new session, creating an inability to provide care efficiently.
Manually scheduling was a significant time-consuming process for both our members and Care Partners.
Approach & Design Decisions
As I started the design phase, I knew that the experience needed to be simple and provide as many guardrails as possible while not overwhelming our members.
Schedule a Session
Scheduling First Session: For members who were new to the app, when launching the scheduling feature for the first time, they would see a prompt for them to Start Scheduling through a prominent primary action. If members weren’t ready to start scheduling right away, they had a clear path back to the Home screen where they could explore other areas of the app.
Choose a Session Type: From interviewing our clinicians and Care Partner teams, I learned the service that members looked for the most was Therapy. A lot of members came to Mindstrong already knowing what they needed. On the screen, we offered a clear link for members to view more information on their cost and coverage instead of displaying it right on the screen. We made this decision after rounds of user testing & feedback that the information was overwhelming and too cluttered on the screen.
Schedule Session: After selecting a type of session, the members would be able to select from a list of providers to schedule with. On this screen, the next available session is displayed showing the provider with the most availability first. Members can also schedule for a session up to 3 months in advance.
View & Manage Scheduled Sessions
Care Team screen: Members could easily view their scheduled sessions by clicking on My Sessions.
Upcoming Sessions: The UI on this screen displays only the most important information of the session in a card format. By clicking on the card, the session details would be shown.
Session Details: The screen shows the length, mode of communication, date & time, as well as payment information if applicable. On the screen, members can reschedule the session by clicking on the Change This Session button.
Change Session: The reschedule flow is the same as scheduling a new session except for an additional option to Cancel the Session.
Cancel Session: Canceling is a destructive action. We supported our members' decision and understood that things do come up. We wanted to make sure our members also understood that there may be cancellation fees as we also needed to respect our providers time.
How we landed
The new self-scheduling feature immediately improved our teams’ workflow. The feature helped convert new members as we saw higher numbers of scheduled sessions. It also proved that members didn’t need to be hand-held through scheduling steps. They could easily schedule their own sessions whenever they needed directly in the app.
Learnings & Next Steps
As we continued to monitor our members' interactions and feedback on the feature, we learned that we still needed to further simplify certain areas of the scheduling flow.
We needed a better experience for members to be able to change their preferences for communication channels easily. In order for members to change the preference on their scheduled session, they would have to cancel and schedule a new session. This was a compromise for the engineering team to get the feature out on a timeline.
We heard from our members that they wanted to know more about the providers before committing to scheduling with them. We had also thought of this point but the feedback definitely validated our hypothesis. So this new feature (View Provider’s Bio) was now on the roadmap.