UX Designing for emergency healthcare professionals across the globe
Client: International Federation of Emergency Medicine
The International Federation of Emergency Medicine (IFEM) is a global membership-based organization promoting high quality emergency medical care for all people.
Their membership and website visitors are diverse. These include emergency care workers, policy makers and researchers situated across countries and regions with very different levels of emergency care infrastructure, cultural practices and digital access.
IFEM wanted to design a new organisational website that better serves their audiences so they reached out to us to conduct audience research and website UX and UI design. The process involved engaging with members across the globe to better understand their unique needs and create a solution that is relevant to their different contexts.
I worked on this project as part of the For Purpose team where I am currently the Design Lead.
Role UX research, UX design, workshop design & facilitation
The challenge
The website is a crucial tool for IFEM, it houses specialist resources, connects and enables health care workers to share knowledge and is the place IFEM communicates with its 800+ members. However, members' feedback on their previous site had been that it was difficult to navigate and find content. The organisation wanted to define a clearer website architecture, one that is intuitive for its different audiences.
In particular, IFEM wanted to better serve emergency care workers in lower resource settings based in the Global South. The design challenge was to identify their barriers and needs through audience research and then ensure we designed website flows and functionality to address them.
The process
We started off with online participatory workshops with members close to the website, including the board, to collectively began to think about audience segments and their needs, as well as reflect on the current site and set a unifying problem statement.
I collected qualitative data through a survey and the previous websites google analytics. This enabled me to look at bahaviour within and between audience segments, particularly at audiences in high and low resource settings
I ran online workshops with emergency care workers targeting members from different global regions. These digital sessions were attended by 18 members from Australisia, Africa, North America, Asia and Europe. The purpose of these sessions were to validate and further articulate audience segments and their needs, and then together using generative approaches begin to shape the new website architecture.
The result
Out of the engagement came clear themes (UX principles) which helped us frame and sort ideas as well as discuss functionality as we moved through the UX design phase. These UX principles were: connection and collaboration, inclusion, learning and support.
Members in low resource settings, the audience IFEM wanted to better serve, had key needs from the website. They told us they:
primarily want to access resources and learning material
navigate the site through mobile. Website analytics told us this was the current behaviour of the majority of users from the Global South
need to be able to access website and resources on slow and unreliable internet
In response, we dedicated a large chunk of the design and development budget to optimising areas of the website with training information and resources. For accessibility for these audiences, we minimised imagery and followed mobile first principles in targeted areas of the site.