Medic Mobile is a global healthcare nonprofit working to improve health equity and access in underserved communities through mobile technology.
• Goal: How might we better support managers and enable them to monitor CHW performance in-app so that they can prioritize their time?
• Time: Research and design in 2018, development in later 2018.
• Role: Conducted user research, created mockups, gathered feedback, iterated, pared features down to final MVP.
Background
Managers support community health workers (CHWs) in being effective health agents in their community and they are vital to the success of CHW programs. They monitor the CHWs’ activities and performance and help them reach their targets, provide ongoing training and support, conduct supervision visits, report on CHW activities, and track CHW impact.
Managers rely on analytics dashboards for CHW performance management, but they spend much of their time in the field, away from their computers and without internet access. The goal of this MVP was to bring some of the most important components of the online dashboards into the app and make them available offline.
Managers rely on analytics dashboards for CHW performance management, but they spend much of their time in the field, away from their computers and without internet access. The goal of this MVP was to bring some of the most important components of the online dashboards into the app and make them available offline.
Process
We started by interviewing managers at one of our partner sites in Mpigi, Uganda, to learn about their role, their daily workflow, the tools they currently use, and how we can better support them.
LG staff in Busia, Kenya conducting a CHW field visit. Photo: © 2018 Medic Mobile photo archives
Medic team interviewing managers in Mpigi, Uganda.
LG manager showing us how she uses the current desktop dashboards.
We gathered a lot of great insights from our managers. Some of the biggest and most pressing user stories we heard were:
1. As a supervisor, I would like to be able to monitor CHW performance directly within the Medic app, so that I have the information at my fingertips when I conduct CHW evaluations in the field.
2. As a supervisor, I would like to know how up to date my data is, so that I know whether or not the data I am looking at is current and whether or not myself or my CHW are having any sync problems.
3. As a supervisor, I would like to identify CHWs in need of regular supervision visits, so that I don't have to keep track of my supervision schedule in a separate format.
1. As a supervisor, I would like to be able to monitor CHW performance directly within the Medic app, so that I have the information at my fingertips when I conduct CHW evaluations in the field.
2. As a supervisor, I would like to know how up to date my data is, so that I know whether or not the data I am looking at is current and whether or not myself or my CHW are having any sync problems.
3. As a supervisor, I would like to identify CHWs in need of regular supervision visits, so that I don't have to keep track of my supervision schedule in a separate format.
So, how might we help supervisors monitor CHW performance in the app?
Preliminary brainstorming meetup with designers and developers.
Early sketches of performance additions to the app profiles.
Early sketches of aggregate performance widgets for managers, with a new detail page with breakdowns of the data by CHW.
Preliminary brainstorming mockups exploring multiple options and the pros and cons of each. These slide decks were treated as working documents and aids to facilitate discussion with a distributed remote team.
Exploring where the CHW performance information should live in the app.
FINAL MVP SOLUTION
Technical strategy:
In order for supervisors to have offline access to all of their CHWs' families and patient data, we would need to increase our data storage support and app performance by 100x or more, which was simply not feasible. We came up with an alternative way for supervisors to view CHW performance data by writing CHW targets into a single summary document that can be synced.
Technical strategy:
In order for supervisors to have offline access to all of their CHWs' families and patient data, we would need to increase our data storage support and app performance by 100x or more, which was simply not feasible. We came up with an alternative way for supervisors to view CHW performance data by writing CHW targets into a single summary document that can be synced.
Front-end UI updates:
• Display a new performance card on CHW profiles summarizing recent activity metrics.
• Support aggregate performance metrics on the Targets page, which allows for quick at-a-glance branch goal tracking.
• Make aggregate widgets clickable to view details with a breakdown of data by individual CHW. Sort by performance; if a certain CHW is performing below the goal, they will be highlighted at the top of the list. Link to CHW profiles.
• Generate follow-up reminder Tasks to check in with CHWs about low performance.
