Enhance the navigability of the shift pickup experience in the CareRev mobile app in order to make it easier for pros to pick up shifts and make money.
Goal: Improve the ease of use and overall experience, indicated by reduced churn and an increased number of shifts per pro.
Per diem, on-demand healthcare work boomed in early 2020 and 2021—healthcare facilities demanded a flexible workforce due to (you guessed it) the COVID-19 Global Pandemic. As a result, pros found themselves scrolling hundreds of posted shifts on the CareRev app forever and ever. In search of a flexible schedule to stave off the constant threat of burnout, we learned from routine user interviews that pros needed to find shifts that met certain criteria. They needed to find shifts at the right facilities, that matched their specialties, and that were scheduled at days and times that worked for them. But, with the influx of shift data, it started to be a full-time job in and of itself just to find said shifts!
I had joined CareRev in 2020 as their Creative Director and Founding Designer, and had already worked on stabilizing the branded look & feel and accessibility of the app, as well as other feature enhancements on both apps that facilitated this shift marketplace for flexible healthcare work. I managed a small team of brand designers and product designers as well, but acted as a floating Player-Coach to meet the company’s lean resourcing needs.
On these product enhancements, I took on the role of principal product designer for the product development team tasked with completing them (lovingly named “Serenity Now!”).
So, what did this look like? some text
As things always go in appropriately-described “fast-paced, Agile environments,” the scope of these projects were short. Shift navigability was enhanced in two phases:
Though our user session indicated more robust filters were needed, we started small and asked how we might enhance the experience just by starting with a way to view shifts by date. Unfortunately, we knew this meant keeping the existing version of “filters”—legacy categories of shifts like bonus shifts and “your shifts,” rather than true filters. But, this would at least provide users some relief to the problem of infinite scrolling.
I provided two options in the form of sketches, and presented them to Product & Engineering partners. Consensus and discussion revealed that Option 1 would allow users to easily navigate to any date they wished without and therefore more useful.
Usability tests of mid-fidelity prototypes via Maze revealed some friction points in our drafts, but overall positive feedback.
The feature was released with a lot of positive user feedback as well; however we knew there was more to be done.
The team was elated to finally address the filtering issue; however our short scope tempered our excitement. The “MVP” filters we would introduce (Facility, Specialty, and Time) were prioritized from a list of criteria preferences we had gathered in our previous user sessions. We vowed (as most tech teams do) to return and add more filters as time allowed because all the best plans are laid with good intentions to address tech debt 🤡.
Though new to the CareRev app, there’s nothing unconventional about filtration UI for this generation’s users. I took inspiration from popular filter conventions such as AirBnb, LinkedIn and Yelp.
Ultimately, we used a simple FAB button to link users to the filters that used accordion components. Usability tests were very quickly validated using these conventions in Maze ✅.
Though not without compromises, these enhancements made enhancements that emphasized the symbiotic nature of the shift marketplace business model in healthcare: Making it easier for HCP users to pick up shifts ultimately helped hospitals fill those shifts and better meet patient demand.
Post-launch, though quantitative metrics didn’t seem to be affected much—a 3-4% uptick in shifts per pro—we received an influx of relieved users with happy and grateful feedback.
Even so, as with any agile design project, these projects left us with many more future enhancements on our list, such as:
