Saving Hours by Streamlining Visitor Check Ins
Background
As the Sr. UX Designer on the Business Incubation team, I led a discovery engagement with a regional healthcare group overseeing multiple hospitals to showcase how NEC’s Visitor Recognition product streamlines visitor check ins. Resulting in freed up 7.5 hours for nurses to focus on critical administrative tasks and the client’s solution sign on.
HCD Methods
User Interviews > Journey Mapping > Ideation Workshop > Process Blueprint > Storyboarding
The Challenge
NEC’s Visitor Recognition is a white label product that enables visitors to pre-enroll their facial biometrics via invitation, then upon arrival check in, on a tablet kiosk at the front desk. The challenge was to demonstrate how the solution unlocked value for the client and their users.
Capturing Today’s Reality
User Interviews
I started by interviewing nurses, inpatients (most accessible), and visitors involved in the visitor check in process. Their needs, frustrations, and interactions between each one were illustrated in a user persona & experience map (See Image A). This was foundational for creating a shared understanding of the user’s reality.
Image A - illustrates the user personas and their role in visitor management process.
Key Takeaways
Inpatients want to avoid receiving unwanted or unannounced visitors.
Visitors get frustrated explaining their patient relationship to nurses.
Nurses loose valuable time doing tedious visitor check in tasks..
Nurses reported spending up to 15 minutes checking in each visitor, and with an average of 30 visitors per day, this adds up to 7.5 hours daily, significantly reducing the time available for critical administrative tasks.
Problem Definition
We prioritized giving nurses their time back, as it presented a more compelling business case compared to enhancing the patient and visitor experience.
How might we simplify the inpatient visitor process to enable receptionist nurses to focus on essential administrative responsibilities?
Solution Ideation
Workshop Facilitation
I facilitated an ideation workshop involving the clients healthcare SMEs along with my team. The goal was to co-create a solution.
I began by presenting the personas, their experience, and the problem statement. My partners gave an overview of NEC’s Visitor Recognition product.
Then, each participant was given blank paper to sketch their vision for a new step-by-step process , addressing the problem statement (See Image B) .
Image B - Step-by-step process sketches.
The New Check In Process
After a 2 day session, we had a unified representation of the new visitor check in process leveraging NEC’s visitor product. I turned it into a Process Blueprint that visualized the new solution and how it eliminated tedious visitor check in tasks for the nurses. (See Image C)
Image C - Process Blueprint demonstrating the solution removing tedious check in steps.
Value Realization
As the solution meets user needs, it unlocked a chain of benefits not just for users but for the business as well. This tree digram was use to highlight all benefits of the new process (See Image D).
Image D - Tree digram showing the all solution benefits.
The New Experience
A low-fidelity storyboard brought the new experience to life, highlighting how the streamlined inpatient visitor process benefits nurses, inpatients, and visitors.
The Impact
My team and I presented the solution to the client. Using all artifacts to drive home the main value realized, freeing up to 7.5 hours for receptionist nurses to focus on critical administrative tasks. Resulting in securing the client acquisition.
NEC’s Visitor User interface design for the proof of concept.