Behavioral Health Solutions
Behavioral Health Solutions (BHS) is a search tool to assist substance abuse clinicians in better caring for their clients by providing easy access to evidence based treatment approaches. BHS was funded by a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant in which Inflexxion partnered with Hazelden. A possible commercial application of the tool is being investigated.
The challenge
Design a system that delivers evidence based treatment information in an easily accessible format and integrate it into the clinician’s daily workflow to address patient care needs.
Contextual interviews
I planned the interview script and conducted ten in-person interviews with clinicians and clinical administrators. The goals were:
- to better understand their workflow and client treatment process
- understand the devices and programs they use in their work
- understand attitudes around learning and implementing new evidence based treatment (EBT) approaches
- gather feedback on the BHS product concept
The content team of consultants and clinical researchers was working on a list of client problem areas to include in the program. In addition to the goals above, I showed this list to interview participants to get feedback on wording and structure.
Interview planning samples
Team presentation
I presented findings and recommendations to consultants, partners and internal team stakeholders. Since assumptions we had made before testing differed from what I heard from clinicians, this presentation and discussion served to get everyone on the same page with product direction, and scope of features and functionality.
Sample: Team presentation
Sample: Use case documentRequirements and use cases
Gathering and documenting requirements was an iterative process. I worked closely with the development team during two week sprints to document technical requirements while documenting user requirements, site architecture and use cases. A proof of concept of the search interface, content tagging and search algorithm was later used during user testing.
Content gathering and tagging
Inflexxion partnered with Hazelden Publishing for 75% of BHS content and with IRETA – a non-profit that helps to educate and train addiction professionals – to find publicly available content for the other 25%.
To create an intuitive search interface and ensure content was easily found given a variety of terms that the clinicians might enter, I worked with the clinical researcher and consultant to create a tagging system. As a result, BHS displays appropriate results from a range of clinical search terms.
BHS launched for field trial with about 300 pieces of content (videos, PDFs, how-to information and topical articles).
Sample: Content strategy planningIterative user testing
Using an Axure prototype and the proof of concept from developers, I planned and conducted iterative user testing on the search interface. I tested with three new clinicians every few weeks over a two month period. I updated the search interface design between each round of testing.
This design process with a heightened cross-functional team effort was a first for Inflexxion. I was asked to give a presentation to the clinical research team and later to the company. The presentation I put together included the design process and how it changed the course of the product strategy.
