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One of the life aspects whose importance is never faded or lost in any country is the issue of health care. This is the factor having, perhaps, the biggest impact on not only personal and professional life of an individual, but also general productivity and welfare of the whole country. With the rapid growth of technology, it would be irrational not to apply the great potential of modern innovation in the sphere of health care and medical services.

Canada, though well known for its health care system suffers from certain imperfections especially where new immigrants are concerned. People need to go family doctors to get proper treatment and 44% of the immigrants do not have a family doctor. They face a lot of challenges in retaining one - Like navigating through government procedure, long period of waiting, endless paperwork, language barrier that proves difficult for new immigrants. Doctors ignoring chronic medical issues, there refusal to take on new patients and dissatisfaction of the patient incase proper attention is not given.

Define - Research

• It takes about 4 months for a new immigrant to get a health card in hand.Getting a family doctor through the Government involves several steps - Agency calls, a long waiting time and filling endless paperwork.

• Language barriers also act as a hindrance. Immigrants find it difficult to communicate.

• Complicated medical history may require more funds initially than they have come prepared with

In order for me to understand the problem at hand better i went ahead an established an interview criteria and started interviewing people.

Design Question

Interview Criteria

After conducting secondary research, to gain a greater understanding of the challenges and goals of new immigrants. I decided to interview three participants who all had recently immigrated to Canada. I set out boundaries and identified a participant criteria. This allowed me to identify opportunities for improvement, and finally develop and test a low fidelity digital solution.

I wanted to clearly define the problem at hand and build empathy, therefore, I set out three parameters for myself to focus on while i was interviewing

I also established a strict criteria for the interview participants

• Must have immigrated to Canada in the last three years

• Should have been actively looking for a family doctor

• Should have gone through the process of finding one and needing medical attention

• Should have immigrated under family sponsorship or under skilled immigrant programs so they are fresh and not students

• Must be willing to consent to use their experiences to draft a solution for the better good of all

• Must be willing to contribute their experiences through which a persona can be build 

• Must reside in Ontario

After the interview process I went through the matter i had gathered regarding the problems each subject had gone through and then categorized and made the detail analysis of the collected data into their pain points, motivations and behaviors. Through this data i was able to derive themes and insights and further derived an overarching insight statement.

The healthcare system was not new immigrant friendly. It was inaccessible, unapproachable and tedious and gave no assurance of immediate action. Language barrier made it difficult for them to communicate their assistance required and thus felt helpless. Long period of waiting created distrust and stress.

User Stories & Task flow

After gathering themes and establishing key insights I decided to write down user stories that comprised two core epics: 

• Searching by preferences

• Booking an appointment

As a new immigrant what bothered Malika the most was her inability to find a doctor based on her preferences and she found herself waiting for weeks. Booking an appointment and having to navigate around a slow government system proved to be a hassle.

The Epic represent her pain points and her frustrations regarding booking an appointment and searching for a doctor.

After writing down user stories I develop a Task flow for Booking an appointment keeping our Persona Malika in mind.

Sketching and Ideation

With the above task flow and objectives in mind, I researched existing patterns and designs for the various required elements of the digital solution. Using the research as inspiration, I sketched a variety of options, as seen below. This enabled me to visualize different ideas and try of different ways to show the flow