SaaS
Product Design
UX
UI
Project Overview
Client: Government of Nova Scotia Province in Canada
Industry: SaaS, Healthcare
Timeline: 12 weeks (2024-2025)
My Role: Lead Product Designer
The Government of Nova Scotia needed an integrated platform ecosystem for their Disability Support Program (DSP) and Home Support Direct Funding (HSDF) Program. As part of a larger human rights remedy addressing systemic discrimination against people with disabilities in the province, a technology solution was needed to help with the implementation of an Individualized Funding (IF) model to empower program participants to self-direct their access to care services and resources.
Existing tools were too complex, inaccessible, and constrained by ambiguity, so our team designed and developed an MVP to provide real-time care funding and budget insights for users with lower technical literacy and impaired physical or cognitive function.
Human-centered, tech-enabled care
The solution that ultimately won the $20m RFP bid was a tech-enabled care facilitation model that was largely based on Gotcare’s existing operational experience in insurance- and private-funded home and attendant care.
As an avid proponent of patient self-management, we recognized the importance of introducing approachable and intuitive tools that build the confidence of users with varying digital literacy – especially when their engagement directly influences their attitudes towards their own care.
Prioritizing the cruciality of human relationships to successful home care services, we built these tools around the patient and care worker journeys with the goals of patient empowerment and streamlining basic workflows – so patients and care workers could focus on the care moments that matter.
Designed to empower patient independence at every step of the care journey
In the ideal experience, users would use the platform's planning tools to plan their budget allocation and care schedules, then coordinate and schedule their care with their care workers via SMS and/or phone call.
When their care worker visits their home to provide support, they would use the mobile app to track their shift duration. At the end of the shift, the care worker clocks out via the app, submitting a shift for the patient's approval.
Dashboard: A holistic view of a patient's care utilization
The patient portal's dashboard shows a high-level overview and visualization of their care budget dollar amount, broken down into the portion of the budget spent on care worker hours and expense for the month.
Planning tools: Encouraging patient autonomy
Budget Calculator
Patients would be taught and encouraged to use the Budget Calculator to learn how to spend their allocated funds, anticipate potential expenses, and plan their required number of shifts accordingly.
Schedule
The Schedule allows users to plan and visualize their potential care shifts before reaching out to their care worker to coordinate and schedule care.
Goals
Working with their case managers, patients would be able to set independence and self-management goals that they could work towards with their care worker.
Care visit: Seamless shift tracking via the Aide mobile app
What's next for this project?
After winning the bid in January, our team and our consortium partners began a long and rigorous negotiation with the province of Nova Scotia. In this period, I led the design efforts for:
building out the platform's design system,
finalizing patient and care worker registration and onboarding flows,
the web and mobile experience for the patient portal and care worker mobile app,
developer handoff,
and preparing for internal and provincial UAT
As we wrap up the final details of the MVP submission, our team will continue into user testing and further iterations. I'm looking forward to pinpointing where patients might drop-off during onboarding and the platform experience, and redesigning specific steps to reduce friction and optimize for improving Nova Scotia's individualized care funding experiences overall.