CANCER CONNECTION APP
Making Breast Cancer More Manageable
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PROJECT OVERVIEW
CHALLENGE
Allina Health is a midwestern-based not for profit healthcare system operating 12 hospitals and 90+ clinics and speciality care particularly in Oncology. Allina wanted to differentiate themselves, position themselves as a leader particularly from other institutions in the space that focus only on cancer. This came after some time developing unique content areas in their main website and native app around things you should know should you be diagnosed with Cancer.
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OBJECTIVE
Together with stakeholders at Allina Health, we were tasked with creating a native Allina Health app dedicated to the unique issues facing cancer patients and their caregivers. We wanted to create an app that could start out as MVP (one cancer type starting with Breast cancer) and grow as the speciality areas at Allina grow.
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UX Manager
(Managed 2+ Product Designers, UX Research)
Native App
12+ Month Project
The process
FROM CONTENT TO APP
Prior to thinking about a Cancer app our team created a content strategy around giving patients and caregivers detailed information they could use while navigating a cancer diagnosis called Cancer resources. Once published on the public facing site, Allina Providers heard time and again that the information, while helpful, the area didn't do enough to provide the kind of support they needed. They wanted all the information in one place, for the experience to be individualized and to feel taken care of.
IN PERSON WORKSHOPPING
Our combined teams (including Allina Providers) met and white boarded different options. We focussed on How Might We (HMW) and dot voting exercises to get to an MVP.
USER TESTING
We lead 8 UX research studies and designed medium fidelity wire frames to illustrate different points leading up to building the final published app. In this initial moderated group study, we asked 15 patients and caregivers.
As you navigate cancer, what would you like more help with?
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I think the main thing that I noticed was the emotional toll it takes on the family. My sister-in-law is currently fighting leukemia and it's been a pretty hard fight.
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More help on the emotional side and how to be more of a comfort to my friend. Also knowing what stages she would start feeling different symptoms and more hospice care support and different options available."
In this unmoderated study we captured video of users interacting with an early prototype.
In this moderated study we interviewed nurse navigator to understand their pain points and how the app could help them support their patients.
JOURNEY MAPPING / MVP PRIORIZATION
We took research findings plus ideas uncovered during our co-collaboration sessions and began to map out the patient journey and prioritize MPV features.
FROM PROTOTYPE TO LIVE IN THE APP STORE
Summarizing many months of iterative design and feedback, working with developers and aligning with key stakeholders to ensure the app provides an individual program, Cancer Connection is now live in the app store. To date 250 (and counting) downloads have been tracked. The average usage is increasing every month and we continue to make updates and monitor analytics. Most importantly, NPS has increased by 20% which speaks volumes to the kind of service this provides and its impact.
