What we know
Simple Practice has a feature called reminders that are broken up into two categories, notifications and ToDo list. Reminders are getting ignored and piling up. Users don’t have control to turn them off.
Why are they ignored? Pilling up?
Assumption: The list becomes too long and un-manageable users can’t decipher which reminders are office notifications vs patient todo list. Users can’t determine the urgency level either for each reminder and act on them in a timely manner. Something crucial could be missed like a diagnosis or treatment note. I’ll attempt to address these concerns and show a end-to-end solution in getting the user to engage with reminders.
Agenda email
Clients already receive an “Agenda Email“ with a list of reminders but there is no sense of urgency to view them. Adding the urgent level and completion call out on the email would provide more context for the user to engage with them.
Push Notifications
Notifications such as this one can be used to notify the physician or administrator that some reminders need attention. Selecting the notification would redirect the user to the “Mobile App“ and land them either on the reminders page or function within the platform such as billing or clients.
Separating list
The current reminder listing co-mingles data that is specific to two types of lists, client reminders and the other is system generated reminders. I’ve paired these down further into “Office notifications” and “Patient notifications”. Separating these out lessens the cognitive load on the user's memory to try to recall what type of reminder they’re looking at. This is evident in the use of icons. Icons help reduce cognitive thinking but users still have to recall the meaning of the icon along with other icons metaphors. I’m not saying icons aren’t useful but they usually have a label next to them.
Urgency levels
I deleted the icons (for reasons mentioned above) and replaced them with color-coded urgency levels, this provides more context to the user as to which reminders they should address sooner than later. I also added a time-sensitive icon inline with the reminder, providing another level of immediacy. These are reminders that patients are waiting for from a physician.
Badging
Badging provides context to the user as to how many reminder are in the reminder section without having to access it.
Gamification
Reminders might go unanswered for a long period of time. Adding the completion meter games the response to reminders and rewards users along the way so they feel in control over their own destiny when there are a lot of reminders to go through. This psychology taps into a user's guilt to complete a task.
Adding a congratulatory message will give the user a sense of progress and accomplishment. Adding useful tips along with that messaging is a great opportunity to build client relationships.
Rewards response
Progressive disclosures
When designing something with a lot of information that the user may not need to know all at once, you need progressive disclosure. Giving the user context as how many reminders are left to view gives them a broader sense into the total number of reminders in each section. Business rules would dictate how many reminders are displayed once selected and how many clicks it takes to display them all.
Sort feature
The current reminders feature doesn’t include a sort function. Hick’s law states that the amount of time it takes for someone to make a decision increases with the number of options they have to choose from.
In this case, the reminder list can get very long and unmanageable. A reminder with an Urgent level assigned to it or a time-sensitive call out can get pushed down as more reminders are added. The sort allows the user to focus on the type of reminders that meets their immediate need.
Selecting a sort label item would trigger the view for that sort type. In the example below, “Urgent“ was selected. Both notification categories (patient and office) would be combined into one view. One possible feature I would add is a filter by ascending, descending order targeting the dates.