Nadia Doutcheva, PhD

Health Links and Where is Care

WhereisCare.org was a local nonprofit start up that connected local community resources with patients in need. For me, this project started as an app design competition (in which my team were finalists), and we believed in the idea so much that we continued working on it. We then found a tiny local non profit working on the same thing, and I partnered with them to continue the work. I worked on this project as a solo UX researcher/designer/everything for over 2 years.

Identifying the Problem

• Families who needed resources were not able to access them
• No clear way to access up to date and accurate information
• Resource navigators and social workers overworked and overwhelmed
• Organization managers lacking knowledge and skill to share information

Student design competition: 3 month timeframe

Research Planning

With the constraints and goal outlined, we were able to get started on the research plan.

Using the process outlined above, we set off to find users, interview them, understand their needs, and design something that could meet those needs.

I was able to create workflows with very low fidelity paper prototypes. This helped me communicate my ideas and get started on the design.

I created high fidelity wireframes to illustrate to the workflow.

Awarded Second Place in the Design Competition

Project Continuation and Transition into Where is Care

After the initial design competition, we found out that a local non profit was attempting to do the same thing!

• Partnered with local non profit WhereIsCare.org
• Became generalist UX team of 1
• Expanded scope of user testing to include community organizers
• Created mock ups and interaction models for different user types based on continued interview research
• Worked with software team to evaluate implementation of designs

With more resources and more time, I was able to do more research and usability testing. Research found that a new type of user had a need for a desktop version of the website.

Now fully working with the non profit team, we were able to continue expanding our work and provide more services!

Lessons Learned

• Learning how to tell a story with research results.
• Learning how to translate research into design changes and recommendations.
• Full array of UX skills from conceptual to design to evaluative