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Improving New Patient
Intake Literature:
Designing A Better Future
With LGBTQ+ Individuals
An intracommunity research project to collaboratively identify and design solutions to heteronormative and cisnormative biases in healthcare literature, through participatory design fiction and co-design methods.
THE PROBLEM
“Spaces and systems can be oriented towards certain people or groups, and conversely away from others.”
(Bolderston & Ralph, 2016, pg. e208)
What does this really mean?
By designing towards the needs and experiences of heterosexual and cisgender patients, health care providers have excluded their LGBTQ+ patients from healthcare literature and created barriers to care for this vulnerable community.
This oversight is significantly impacting the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ individuals.
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
3 month dissertation project as part of a Master's degree.
MAKE OF THE TEAM
I was the lead researcher and sole designer for this project, with supervision from Dr. Leigh-Anne Hepburn.
PRIMARY GOAL
To explore and uncover ways to improve this experience for LGBTQ+ individuals through UX design.
MY ROLE
As this was my Master's dissertation, this project was designed by and for myself.
Everything from the research proposal, literature review, and interview practices, to the design, workshop facilitation and development of final outcomes of the project was entirely self-funded and self-motivated.
THE PROCESS
The full course of the project after research proposal approval is included in the following slide gallery.
A summary of major findings, design outcomes and key takeaways is included in the following sections.
MAJOR FINDINGS
ONE
A lack of trust in clinics and reception staff, and the healthcare sector as a whole. Significant fears include a betrayal of any trust placed in medical staff.
TWO
Without established trust and ongoing assurance that LGBTQ+ patients will be treated fairly and accurately, these patients will not fill out form fields that identify them as LGBTQ+
THREE
Concerns about privacy – receptionists seeing name, address and phone number alongside sexual orientation and/or gender identity as they enter it into the system.
FOUR
Privacy concerns extend to digital forms as well – where the information is saved, who can access it, etc. with regards to employees, government agencies, and third party agencies.
FIVE
The environment of the waiting room is a significant indicator for patient comfort and trust, no matter how inclusive intake forms may be.
DESIGN OUTCOMES
The aim of this study was to develop a tangible example of a form that could be adopted by clinics, to address the gap in academic knowledge and implementable resources.
The results of the workshops formed a guiding framework that helped me to design an example form that could be used by a medical clinic or general practice which would sufficiently meet the needs of their LGBTQ+ patients.
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A key focus of this form was putting agency back in the hands of the patient, by allowing them space to use their own terminology to describe themselves and their family, rather than making cisnormative, heteronormative assumptions about family structure, identity and sexuality.
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Future iterations of this research project and its outcomes would include feedback from healthcare providers to identify and account for any obstacles (systemic or otherwise) that may impede implementation.
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LESSONS LEARNED
"If I go into somewhere that's like, got Pride things on the wall and has like, progressive and like, modern sexual health messages and has like, harm reduction drug-related things rather than 'DRUGS BAD!' on the walls? Then I’m going to be much more likely to answer those questions.”
- Participant Quote
While I went into this project seeking to build on lived experience in order to generate a community-driven solution to problems in healthcare literature, I discovered that a design intervention is needed far earlier in the user journey: in the waiting room and perhaps even earlier, in the street or on the internet, and that the efficacy of new patient intake forms is entirely dependant on these earlier interventions.
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This speaks volumes to the value of user research, when even an intracommunity research project yields surprising and fascinating results. The project also offered some valuable insights into the efficacy of Participatory Design Fiction as a modern qualitative data collection method that steps away from more clinical, hierarchical methods.
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This project was not without its challenges, and many of the original goals I had for this project had to be re-framed, but the results of the study were surprisingly informative and have opened the door for further research. The short time frame did not facilitate a more robust, in-depth investigation, but I hope to revisit this project in future.