Target audience: Doctors and nurses working actively in hospitals with covid19 patients.

My Role: I am the creator of this project, I gathered engineers that believed in the vision and purpose of the product to collaborate with me. Among my roles were: product owner, UX designer and brand designer. My role in Research was with very limited resources.

I worked with a team composed as follows: Team lead and UX designer (me), one graphic designer, three  web developers, one content creator.

Responsibilities: Design process, Management, User interviews, Experience design strategy, Brand, Prototyping in low and high fidelity, User interface design. 

* I had interview calls (short) with 6 doctors, their time is limited as special circumstance.

* Pain points: the details cannot be shared fully because this project is in progress and cannot be fully disclosed, NDA. However, important to mention as the research project that 3 of the doctors were very reluctant to receive visible/public emotional support as they claimed they are trained for this kind of situation and whoever cannot bear it then he is not suitable for the job. Important to remark these doctors were not working in ICU, their hospitals were barely attending one or two covid19 patients, perhaps the reason for them not being sympathetic to other colleagues. All of them agreed that the fact of having 24/7 unconditional support brought them a feeling of relief. They also requested the more private the better as they don't want to be seen as "weak". Important to mention, the work environment is highly negative due to the situation and they try to search youtube videos of "thank you doctors" or even "funny cat videos" only to relax. 

* Among this group would be basically suitable people to provide emotional support. As I have connections with the Christian community I know they'd volunteer to do this task. However, considering non-religious people the other supporters could be Therapists or professionals that work with people as they'd have the knowledge, patience and empathy required to provide emotional support.

* I had calls with 10 members from different Churches to see if they'd like to provide emotional support and if a channel of communication was needed or if they already did it using some existing product. 

* Important to remark that they would not replace a proper therapy, but we aim to prevent or provide comfort before they are pushed to the edge and they break down or take undesired actions like trying to commit suicide. Someone telling you that everything will be alright is a minimum you need.

* Pain points: the details cannot be shared fully because this project is in progress and cannot be fully disclosed, NDA. Members from community wanted to provide personalized and closer support to doctors and nurses further the claps at 8:00 pm or encouraging videos, specially after hearing the news of doctors committing suicide, dying, broke down. Members from the community had helped acquaintances but they are also concerned about other healthcare workers that might be suffering but do not have anyone to support them, they want to provide unconditional support to them, this means they don't need to know them or be friends or even share the same faith. The only requisite is they opened to be helped.

* The template used, given the few resources in time and users was Lean Persona, the elements within this template are enough to cover all the information required for the project.

* Two personas were created: Doctors, which represent the main audience that needs the support and the Supporters, which represents the members of community that want to provide emotional support.

After empathizing with our goal users: healthcare workers and supporters, I worked along with the team to visit the pain points of both users and some opportunities were found.

Next, I will mention Insights found for Healthcare workers, for abbreviation purposes (not omission at all) I will summarize our Healthcare workers (which include doctors, nurses, staff from hospitals) to Doctors. The insights as follows:

Doctors - Insight #1: Doctors work in a negative environment surrounded of bad news, frustrations, tough decisions to make. They tried to find good news about covid19 but results on youtube show around 90% of bad news in the top, so they searched funny videos instead. Then, a way of counteracting all this negativity could be providing them a source of curated good news about covid19 such as: number of recovered patients every day, survival stories, people helping each other in the crisis, people showing unity, community wanting to cheer up and thank to Doctors.

Doctors - Insight #2: Most of doctors would be opened to get in touch with counseling or emotional support as the resources they currently have are scarce (not enough therapists available in the hospital and they are already busy with other patients, also they do not do shifts 24/7) or not suitable (family and friends provide support but they might not have the patience or words of comfort for them. Didn't you have that relative or friend who told you what to do and what to feel without empathizing at all with your situation? yes, you know what we are referring to now).

Doctors - Insight #3: All doctors were opened to receive encouraging messages or media in the name of the Hospitals they were working, in one side it is not a personal message to some specific staff (names) but it is inclusive and it does not feel their personal space is being invaded.

Doctors - Insight #4: If Doctors would use an application this would be on a mobile, they are busy to sit on a desk in this emergency. Therefore, platform for them would be Android and/or iOS.

Moving to the Therapists and Christian leaders, in the same way for abbreviation purposes they will be referred as Supporters. The insights are:

Supporters - Insight #6: They feel the natural call to provide emotional support as part of the foundations of their belief or job. They wanted a channel of communication to support Doctors regardless they know them or not, their goal is support to the ones that need it. 

Supporters - Insight #7: They have more spare time locked-down at home and they feel helpless and stressed watching the news. They wish they could support Doctors in a more personal way further "Thank you videos" or anonymous donations, telling them they can count on them, support them on grief. They claimed and helping Doctors bring a relief to them that at least they are doing something more than staying at home. In a summary action of helping is help themselves.

Supporters - Insight #8: If they'd use an application platform to help Doctors they are willing to use either a Desktop or a Mobile. Younger users prefer Mobile. Older users prefer Desktop.

Community - Insight #9: Finally, supporters expressed that people from community in general, neither Therapists or Christians also wanted to support with what they could. For instance, community wanted their "Thank you" videos to be available for Doctors in a unique resource instead of using Google or Youtube searching filters. They also noted that covid19 searches show mainly negative news on the top, one solution is adding certain trendy tags, let's say #ThankYouDoctors, but then this adds one more step of difficulty for Doctors to search for the positive content the Community created for them.

As conclusion, in the last insight we've found a possible feature that would be good to be accessible to any person without any specific profile or restriction.

Another conclusion: Doctors would mainly use the application in a Mobile platform whereas Supporters would mainly use Desktop platform. Then, the application should work in both platforms.

During the design it was defined that Application would run in the browser and this would be responsive to work in both Desktop or Mobile.

In the next picture there are paper prototypes of the three main features proposed coming from the first iteration of design inspired in the insights:

* Hospital walls: See picture in the left, they could be created by any Doctor who is user from our community and works in that Hospital. The Hospital page is public, workers registered can post messages there, giving some information to the public or requesting any kind of support, either emotional support (prayers or asking for positive vibes) or other kind of support (asking for medical supplies or help for patients, etc)

* Community to network/match Doctors with Supporters: See picture in the middle. This would be similar to a dating app matching with the exception that only one way of browsing candidates is allowed. Doctors can browse through a list of Supporters and filter them by different criteria like country, city and type (Therapist or Christian Leader) and they can request connect with them. In the other side Supporters cannot browse Doctors and offer help, since this is emotional support the part that needs the service (Doctors) has to be opened to receive it, therefore it is better to let them do the first contact. Once connection is mutual Doctors have access to the full contact of Supporter and can get in touch in the schedules that the supporter profile displays as available (not all of them would offer 24/7).

* A content page full of positive resources: See picture in the right, the platform would display curated positive content (created by the community) based on tags or filters from user such as  country, date and topic (they would be: thank you Doctors, helping each other, miracles). For the moment the content would be embedded youtube videos listed.

While the team was building prototype in the web for the application, I received some feedback and noticed the first draft UX looked more like an old and basic web application with search engine showing elements in hierarchy like most of websites, specially our feature of Positive content.

Then, I focused on evoking positive memories to our main users, the Doctors, with our UX.  As the resources would be literally a box positive entertainment this immediately brought a TV to my mind. First idea was to make it Skeuomorphic but then, decided the UX arrangement would at least resemble a little bit to a classic TV, Doctors would be familiar to look for the channels in the right side and have the content on the center of the screen. Any positive flash news would pass in the bottom of the screens like some news channels still do nowadays and the list of results would be available to see as thumbnails in the bottom of the screen. We'd have the search parameters in the bottom-right to adjust and the TV channel buttons would be accordions that when selected would show detailed description of what is the channel about.

This is how HUG-TV was born, keeping the vision of providing emotional support through spiritual/virtual hugs. This would be a direct hug between the community that generates content and the Doctors.

Although some projects might work this step first, this was postponed until the second iteration of the design due to the time constraints, research  as higher priority task and absence of a graphic designer earlier in the project. 

I am aware of Color therapy as a form of holistic healing that has been used for thousands of years to treat physical and emotional issues. Also known as chromotherapy, color therapy is regaining popularity today. Then I'd look for palettes with relaxation and peace topics to support one of the main goals of this app: create a positive environment/content to bring positive feelings to Doctors. I visited the website Color Hex and chose two main palettes: 

1. Calm waters with shades of green-blue

2. Center of calm with shades of indigo, violet and light green

Although Calm waters has a beautiful combination, it also reminds me the palettes of many hospitals or surgery rooms and to be honest I did not want to give more of the same to the Doctors, but transport them to a different environment. That's where the second palette would be predominant, the colors blue, indigo and blue bring peace and remind dreams and spirituality, all themes we are interested on expressing trough the website. There is one more Key color that was added, light orange, which is explained next.

For future usability testing purposes, pitching this application to potential investors and sharing the user flows with future developers from the team a low fidelity in black and white was created by myself in Figma.

One addition to the Feature "connect Doctors with Supporters" was the star rating system, this came as result of a quick usability testing. This would allow Doctors to give the feedback of the emotional support received. If a certain quantity of Doctors give two or one stars to a Supporter, he will be suspended after feedback from the rating is provided, we don't want to discourage supporters but let them know how to give a better service. 

Next step was merging the color palette  from step 5 to the Figma prototype. In the next picture you can see the user flow for Doctor user: visit a Hospital wall.

In the second picture you see a sample of Hug TV screen.  

THE PRODUCT: A pwa application which is a responsive page that works in Desktop (community in general, locked down in their houses) and Mobile (Doctors, actively moving in the hospital). Main feature is called HUG-TV, and channel content are videos of GRATITUDE, KINDNESS, MIRACLES and UNITY.The content of the channel displayed can be customized by date, country and language.

Public will see their videos displayed in HUG-TV and realize they can be easily seen by doctors, then feel encouraged to create move videos like this. HUG-TV gives easy steps for their videos to be seen such as: add to their videos keywords or hashtags related to the topics.

Prototype of this feature can be tested here

● Research was done before and during the development doing surveys to doctors and nurses to understand better how we could help them and build an application that has User Centered Design. Shared the idea with fellow Christians and members from community in Bolivia to receive their feedback too.

● We are aware Doctors could find comfort in Therapists, but quantity of these professionals is on high demand not only for Doctor patients but also people locked down in their houses. Hug of the Soul would be available for Doctors 24/7, any time they feel distress or cannot even sleep.