Highlights
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Research findings resulted into "Quick Wins" for the product team, which included quicker registration sign up, unlocking pay, and co-branded logo.
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Research impacted priority shift on roadmap.
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Led to some missing data tracking elements.
Role
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UX Researcher - Andelae McCoy
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Lead UX Researcher - Brittany Coffey
Process
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Remote Moderated User Interviews
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Quantitative Analysis Data
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Synthesis and Analysis
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Prototype
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Usability Test
Tools
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Usertesting.com
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Miro
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Figma
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Confluence
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Microsoft Teams
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Jira
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Power Point
01
Problem
Company background
Health Carousel Travel Nursing connects healthcare facilities to a national network of experienced travel nurse and allied healthcare professionals for immediate and crisis support. HCTN has built a thriving, talented community of qualified, credentialed nurses and allied professionals ready to work wherever and whenever needed. With a nationwide reach, streamlined digital experience, and clinically led support team, Health Carousel is the remedy for staff shortages and career burnout. Mobility, scalability, and flexibility: it’s a workforce strategy that makes healthcare work better for everyone.
"3 month average of new candidates drop off after registration = 66%"
This was the problem being discussed between multiple teams and an on-going problem that needed some more understanding from our customers perspective. This is how our research team became involved.
Problem statement
Our portal for candidates called On Demand, continues to grow since our initial launch. In many live sections of the application, there have been iterations made to enhance the travel nurse experience. However, there are also parts of the journey that may have only shipped a lightweight version of functionality. The problem to be solved for Advance & Improve Candidate Engagement is to examine key parts of the current application against our funnel metrics and look for opportunities to better the experience, which we believe in turn, will drive more toward our goals.
Pain points
1. Current data: 3 month average of new candidates (travel nurses) drop-off after registration = 66%​
2. Engaged candidates = better candidates and more likely to return for assignments, but there is no clear incentive for them to do so.​
3. Not all candidates want to register or use OnDemand for job searches.
02
Methods
Identify problems and plan
HCTN OnDemand has been experiencing a significant drop off from new users when signing up for OnDemand. Our registrations have recently been decreasing in addition to an already low return rate. Identifying pain points and reasons why this is occurring will allow us to make the right changes to the flow where it matters most.
We need to understand the nurses’ perspective on our “beginning of funnel” flow, from the time they’re first introduced to us (digitally) to when they arrive on the OnDemand dashboard. Meeting with the Lead UX Researcher, we discussed our research plan and the learning objectives we wanted this project to achieve.
The learning objectives we need our research to find out:
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What are users' understanding of OD by the time they get to the Dashboard?
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Have their ‘research’ needs been addressed before arriving to OD?
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How does the full flow feel? (Long? Informative? Confusing?)
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Does the ‘story’ through the flow make sense?
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Where/what do users get confused?
Get the data
The first step for this research was to verify the data regarding the drop off. The WHAT? I wanted to understand what has been happening and what that looks like. Connecting with the Data Analytics team was beneficial to putting together the data.
Image courtesy of Data Team
Choosing the method
Now, I wanted to know the WHY? Talking with my research lead, we thought the best method for this study would be remote moderated interviews with 5 nurse travelers. We discussed walking participants through a prototype of each flow of the process from landing on a social media ad through the registration until they reached the OnDemand dashboard.
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In order to understand what questions I needed for the test, I had to first create a prototype of flow. I created a prototype to get a better understanding of the flow and a visual of what our customers see on their end.
Figma prototype used for testing.
Recruiting and interview questions
Recruiting participants was all done through Usertesting.com. Having screener questions prepared for who to recruit was a time saver. I knew I needed a mix of new travelers and experienced travelers. Focusing on a broader persona would cover most users of our product.
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The questions would now reflect each screen of the flow. There would be at least 8 different screens a user would go to. I separated the questions for each flow. Some examples of questions included:
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What kind of message is this ad telling you?
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Would you be hesitant to click this button? What is going through your mind when deciding to click it or not?
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Is this what you were expecting the next screen to be? Tell me why or why not?
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What are your thoughts and feelings through the whole process from beginning to end?
Uh-oh...we need more
Soon ​after the first few interviews, I realized that we would need more. The first 5 interviews had a mixture of new and experienced travelers doing the flow on desktop. However, I realized that when I would be presenting these research findings to stakeholders, the first pushback would be over 72% of our customers use mobile devices. I knew that I needed a balance of new vs experienced travels along with desktop vs mobile experience. This would allow me to get a fuller picture of why our customers were dropping off.
03
Findings
Insights and deliverables
Synthesizing
Wow! This was going to be a lot of synthesizing. Using a template, from one of my favorite researchers, was helpful for this. I knew that I needed to get ahead of this synthesizing, so having pre-organized post-its helped show a clearer picture. Categories were the starting point to a big Miro board. Categories included:
The next step was breaking down each screen flow and finding common themes. Tagging certain post-its for impactful quotes and videos was going to be key in presenting this to stakeholders. This is an example of one screens themes from our users:
Miro board used to group interviews into themes.
Successful Storytelling
One of the best storytelling methods for me, is EMPATHY. Empathy mapping was the one way to present this research because of different stakeholders and other team members attending presentation readout. Having others see, feel, hear, and think about what our customers perspective was the best way to translate the research findings. And that's just what I did. Each screen was broken down into an empathy map. Recommendations and takeaways were also included in readout.
Empathy Map showing Registration pain points, quotes, and takeaways.
Research Takeaways
We set out to find these answers to our learning objectives and here is what we found:
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What are users' understanding of OD by the time they get to the Dashboard?
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Complete things on “their own time”.
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Don’t have to work with recruiter.
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OnDemand presents as a set-service platform.
2. Have their ‘research’ needs been addressed before arriving to OD?
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No. Our customers are continuously looking for reviews, comparing to other agencies, seeking more information.
3. How does the full flow feel?
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Time consuming
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Too many steps/questions
4. Does the ‘story’ through the flow make sense?
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Steps in sign up and registration feel repetitive to our customers.
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The value prop is lost by being placed at the end of the flow.
5. Where do users get confused?
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Social ad – Believe it's an app to download.
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Website – Not enough information, feelings of wanting/needing more.
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Registration & Job Preferences – Not knowing how to answer. Certain questions limit jobs.
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Dashboard – “Share document”, complete tasks (new travelers).
04
Impact
The results
From the stakeholders and team
What happened after the presentation was this feedback:
Research report
A priority matrix was created to help the PM and business understand what could be some quick wins for the business. This matrix that I created was included in the research report.
Priority Matrix showing Quick wins and efforts needed to be taken.
Business Outcomes
Quick Wins that were prioritized included:
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Unlocked pay: From this research presentation and continuous customer feedback, candidates can now see pay in OnDemand without completing required tasks.
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Quick registration with 1 page form: My research on the time a customer has to spend to access the dashboard has heavily influenced the decision to shorten the sign-up process. Taking an 8 page registration flow down to 1!
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Cobranded HCTN / OnDemand logo: The team has updated the logo on OnDemand to keep the branding consistent
05
Reflections
My learnings
This research gave me so many learnings and growth as a researcher. Here are just a few of them:
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Synthesize early – Make synthesis after each interview a priority. You never know when business will shift your research priorities causing you to get behind on all the synthesizing.
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Highlight the key questions – If an interview fails because of technical errors, time management and other factors, at least have the most important questions you need answered highlighted.
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Follow up with research - Make sure after presentation to follow up with different team members to find out where the research findings are landing on roadmap.
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Lead researcher helps - Having an amazing lead to help kick off this research study and double check interview questions was beneficial in helping me along the way.
Challenges
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Data all over the place.
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Synthesizing as a researcher of one is time consuming!
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Finding the right team to start prioritizing findings.
Next steps
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Continue to monitor data for improvements in new user drop-off.
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Follow up with PM on the priority matrix back burner items.