Urgent Care Facility Search Experience for VA.gov
About Facility Locator
The Facility Locator is VA's single source of truth for people to find VA facilities and location details about all VA facilities. It serves many purposes, from finding basic facility address and phone information, to preparing for a visit, to understanding eligibility for community care.
The Problem
Inconsistent search experiences, confusing language, and inaccurate data contributed to a difficult to use locator tool which made it difficult for Veterans to easily find urgent care. Our team focused on surfacing the many types of services Veterans can receive through various urgent care facilities.
My Role
I worked as the Senior UX Designer on a product team with several developers and a product manager. I worked closely with government product owners from VA and the Office of Community Care.
UX Research | UX Design | UX Writing | UI Design
Processes and Methods
Veteran & stakeholder interviews | Service mapping | Wireframing | Prototyping | Usability testing | Accessibility reviews | Collaboration workshops
Understanding the Problem
Our hypothesis was that Veterans would be able to locate Urgent Care facilities but would have difficulty distinguishing between VA care and Community care. They may also have difficulty understanding location subtypes: retail, urgent, and pharmacy.
Research Questions
What details do Veterans expect to see on urgent care facilities?
Do Veterans understand how urgent care and community care work together?
Should we prioritize Urgent Care on the Find VA Locations page?
Do Veterans know the difference between "retail" and "urgent" locations?
How can we provide access to the Benefit PDF for Veterans?
Speculating a Solution
Our team held interviews, collaborative workshops, asked lots of “what ifs” and went through lots and lots of wireframing before creating a prototype to test with Veterans.
Ideating on ways to surface various services provided through VA and Community Care.
The original Facility Locator.
What we tested. Check out the prototype.
Research Findings
Veterans' mental models for VA benefits and health care start with the task they are trying to complete (e.g., get disabiltiy benefits), the service they are looking for (e.g., career counseling), or the condition they are experiencing (e.g., depression).
After testing our proposed solution to clarify the urgent care facility locator experience, we learned that Veterans were not aware of the types of care they can receive at urgent care facilities. They did not have a clear understanding of what benefits are available to them and how those benefits differ depending on location.
A detailed review of research findings and design recommendations can be found on VA’s Github.
Moving Forward
We prioritized finding opportunities to define benefits and location types inside of the Facility Locator. We also ideated on how to allow for searching by service in addition to location type so that Veterans could more easily find what they needed.
Visualizing the complex search patterns inside the tool.
Defining location types through search result cards.
Speculating… What if the locator was a form that displayed tailored results?
Takeaways
Talking with Veterans about their experiences and their trauma can weigh on you. Care for yourself.
Incremental implementation can result in big changes.