The Real Relief for Essential Workers
Paving a path towards steady employment for healthcare professionals
Who is Clipboard Health?
Clipboard Health is a staffing agency that advertises per diem shifts to nurses and healthcare professionals.
The Brief
We prioritized designing an informative, easy-to-use experience for prospective Clipboard Health employees to find available shifts in their area, before they commit to applying to the company.
Duration
Three-week sprint
Team & Role
Jessica Boyd
Erin Hendershot
Myself: UX Designer & Researcher
Tools
Airtable
Figma
Miro
Whimsical
Zendesk
Methods
Market research
User surveys
User interviews
Competitive analysis
Comparative analysis
Affinity mapping
Wireframing
Prototyping
Usability testing
The Problem
I can’t see!
The main problem is only fully-onboarded healthcare professionals can view which specific shifts are available to them, curbing the incentive for prospective users to apply.
The Solution
Show me the money!
Our solution is to provide a shift-browsing experience for all user, similar to searching for a hotel room: easy, straightforward, and implements online shopping best practices.
Solution Objectives
1. Design a feature that allows prospective users to see the available shifts in their area.
2. Build filters for easier browsing, a feature to favorite shifts, and display a medical facility’s ratings and reviews.
Deliverables
Shopping made simple
Inspired by the best practices of other shopping experiences, our prototype gives the user the opportunity to browse through shifts in their area with the ease of shopping for a weekend hotel.
An experience made for me
With options to filter and sort available shifts, our users quickly see how Clipboard Health can fit within their active lifestyles.
These are a few of my favorite things
Collecting all shifts-of-interest on one page will help our users make a fast, informed decision to join Clipboard Health.
The Approach
Market research
I researched the landscape of the healthcare job market and discovered that healthcare workers are experiencing similar rates of job instability as the general public. Not only would we be helping Clipboard Health remediate the 80% abandonment rate of their onboarding process, but we were helping the average Clipboard Health user - who were, on average, of a marginalized identity - find employment.
Survey says…
We sent a user survey asking healthcare workers about their job hunting experiences.
96.5% of applicants expect to see job descriptions when job searching
Salary is the strongest consideration for prospective employees
The only information that Clipboard Health listed were salary ranges (no hourly rates), and vague job descriptions. This information helped us understand what information to include in our prototype.
We then conducted user interviews with existing Clipboard Health employees, asking about the successes and frustrations with their current experience with the platform. All participants reported no complaints with the onboarding process , affirming our decision to focus our efforts on the prospective user experience, not that of the current user.
Competitive analysis
Using a feature inventory, we compared Clipboard Health’s current shift browsing experience to competing staffing agencies NurseGrid, NurseFly, and BlueCrew. The features we focused on were visibility of available shifts, advanced filtering, feedback & reviews, and shift favoriting.
Clipboard Health’s opportunities for growth were glaring by comparison. Their experience lacked all four of the above features, which became a priority to incorporate into our design.
Comparative analysis
My team and I conducted usability tests of two comparator apps known for their exemplary browsing experiences, AirBNB and ZocDoc. We recruited 5 healthcare professionals to execute simple tasks on the apps, and asked for their feedback.
Their enjoyment of the comparators’ experiences boiled down to:
Efficiency
Customization
Visual appeal
Thus, we focused on those three attributes during our initial sketches.
Who are we doing this for?
We created an affinity map to distill our research into user attitudes. The patterns we found in user needs and behaviors informed the development of a persona, who we affectionately called the Busy Bunny.
The Busy Bunny:
A healthcare professional looking to supplement their income while maintaining an active lifestyle.
They take on many responsibilities and don’t have time to engage in complicated processes.
They are frustrated by lack of information, and are motivated to engage in personalized experiences.
Let’s see what the audience says
We harvested bountiful user data in anticipation of the feast: the working prototype of Clipboard Health’s shift shopping experience. We contacted the same usability test subjects and asked them to directly compare our shopping experience design with those of AirBNB and ZocDoc.
Overall, they agreed that we had accomplished an intuitive, straightforward showcase of Clipboard Health’s available shifts.
We did receive some constructive feedback:
Users wanted more information about the company before committing to looking for shifts.
The iconography we chose to indicate time of shift was confusing.
To address these issues, we included more information on our homepage about the benefits of working for Clipboard Health. We also placed the icons under the filter to select time of shift, to explain their meaning.
Next Steps
Shift booking feature
Even though we improved the experience for prospective users, the current employees still run into difficulty finding shifts. The process of scheduling their shifts requires multiple verification processes from Clipboard Health customer service. Our next step would be to design a shift-browsing flow for current Clipboard Health professionals similar to the one for prospective users, as well as to automate the process of shift booking.
Facility-facing app
My team would love to design a version of the Clipboard Health app for healthcare facilities to use. The scheduling processes of Clipboard Health and the facilities they work with are completely divorced. One central scheduling hub would eliminate confusion and streamline paying healthcare professionals on time.