Sandy Hilfiker, MA Principal, Chief Experience Officer

UX Design for Vets

   

About us

  Small, woman-owned, mission-based health communication company   National leader in health literacy   Create digital health tools that can be accessed, understood, and used by people in their daily lives   Support state, federal, and private organizations

   

Agenda

 Warm up

 PTSD website redesign overview

 Methods

 Key findings

 Lessons learned

   

Lifetime Prevalence of PTSD

  Vietnam Vets: 30%   Iraqi Freedom: 11-20%

  Gulf War: 12%

  Almost 25% of women Vets report being sexually assaulted while in the military   55% of women and almost 40% of men report experiencing sexual harassment while in the military

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/ptsd-overview/basics/how-common-is-ptsd.asp

   

Warm up

  Imagine you’re creating a website on PTSD for Veterans and family members   Write down one word or phrase that comes to mind when you think about what this website should be   Turn to the person next to you, share your word and why you picked it

Project Overview

   

Goal

Redesign the VA’s National Center for PTSD website to be more user-friendly for Vets, family members, and clinicians who treat PTSD. Make the site more patient-centered.

   

   

A tale of two websites

   

Our challenge

  Working within the Vets.gov template   Multiple and sometimes competing audience needs

  Recruiting Vets with PTSD

  Understanding the unique online information needs of Vets with PTSD

   

Health Literacy

We struggle with complex health

information.

   

Living with PTSD

Common complaints from people living with PTSD include issues with concentration, attention, and memory.

   

health.gov/HealthLiteracyOnline

Methods

   

Methods

  Analytics analysis   Content and usability audit   Focus groups with Veterans and family members   IDIs with clinicians   Baseline usability testing with eye tracking   Card sorting with Veterans and clinicians   Click testing   Prototype testing

Total Participants: 152

Focus Groups with Collaging

   

Highlights

  Wanted to see more in-depth and tailored content (by war, branch, and type of trauma)

  Seek out online information about PTSD, mostly from institution and

government websites

  Identified resources such as self-help tools and support groups as the highest priorities

  Identified “You are not alone” as a key message or theme they would want to see on a PTSD website

   

   

“I think that when dealing with PTSD, I feel like sometimes civilian PTSD is way different than military PTSD, and a lot of information out there is on civilian PTSD. Even in the military, the type of PTSD I experience as a Navy Vet is totally different than someone in the Army.”

   

   

“I’ve found a support group on Facebook — I have an OTH discharge. It’s pretty much like the VA, there’s not a lot of support so we have to find support in other places.”

   

Collaging  

Par+cipants  create  a  collage  that  represents  the  characteris+cs  they  would  like  to  see  in  a  new  Website      Result:  Provides  insights  into  users’  needs  normally  not  revealed  in  interviews  and  focus  groups    

   

   

We can do this together

   

   

Support, there can be life

   

   

Feeling small, feeling alone.

Baseline Usability Testing with Eye Tracking

   

Highlights

Strengths:   Wealth of material   Information is research-based   Video and text formats available   Apps available for self-help   Videos production is high quality

Weaknesses:   Duplicative content, and sometimes outdated   Public/Professional structure causes confusion   Content is hard to find—even after being found once   Systematic or thorough exploration of the site is difficult   Visual design and page layout do not guide visual search   PTSD search functionality not easy to find

Order   AOI   %  views   Median  TTFF  

1   Carousel  image  

100%   0.39  

2   Content  tabs  

93%   2.25  

3   Public  header  

75%   3.92  

4   Main  nav   87%   4.28  

5   Local  search  

50%   5.29  

6   Main  content    

93%   11.95  

8   Right  column  

50%   70.36  

Card Sorting

Homepage  

Understand  PTSD  

Get  Help  and  Treatment  

For  Families  and  Friends  

Professional  Training  and  Tools  

PTSD  Research  

About  Us  

En  Español  

Click Testing

Veterans often used multiple paths to get to the same content — for example, using the left navigation items and links on the main page (much more than clinicians).

Veterans overwhelmingly understood that the Get Help and Treatment page was intended for consumers. They also understood where they could find provider-oriented treatment content.

   5/20/17 OBXtek Inc., Proprietary

Most participants missed the PTSD Search bar. Many went to the VA site-wide search instead.

Design

   

Voice and Tone

  Welcoming and supportive, promoting a sense of community and of trust in VA services   Incorporates language recognizing the holistic and complementary approaches that many people take to treatment and recovery

Before: Effective treatments for PTSD exist. Learn about treatment options and care after trauma. (NOTE: The National Center for PTSD does not provide direct clinical care or individual referrals.*)

After: Treatment works. Learn about treatments that are proven to help people with PTSD. Find out how treatment can help you heal from trauma — so you can live the way you want to.

Lessons Learned

   

  There is still stigma around PTSD which can make recruitment difficult

  Important to screen for computer use; some participants were very unfamiliar with technology

  Participants needed time to ‘vent’ and establish rapport with the moderator

  Vets wanted to connect with other vets during sessions Bottom line: Allow more time for recruitment, testing, and relationship building

Recruitment and testing

   

  Remote testing is not always ideal   In-person testing can be easily combined with online software (and is more efficient)

  Eye tracking doesn’t work well with participants who wear bifocals or have a lazy eye

Logistics

   

  Take the time to go through IRB or get an exemption

  Include help resources as part of consent

IRB and consent

   

  Is problematic, assumes users know what group they belong to and only want content targeted at this group   Users typically think in terms of topics, not identity   Forcing people to self-identify increases cognitive effort   Users can feel anxious that the information they are seeing is

incomplete or incorrect   Can be appropriate when a group is totally distinct (e.g.

separating family support content)

Audience-based navigation

   

  Redesigning in a bad template can only take you so far   Eye-tracking and click testing are powerful tools for demonstrating template issues in a quantitative way   You have to advocate!

Working within a template

communicatehealth.com/blog

Thank you! @ CommunicateHlth