INTERVIEWS TO UNDERSTAND WORKFLOW COLLABORATION

Research project background. High risk case management requires multi-person Care Teams and some teams numbered up to 15 people. Team members (users) engaged up to 7 systems to manage each patient and none of these applications supported workflow collaboration with other team members even though multiple care team members may be responsible for different parts of the same workflow. For example, some of the tasks for a "client home visit" included gathering prior visit information, updating Rx information, and scheduling the visit. Different people on the care team may be assigned only one of these tasks. Users reported that the lack of ability to share tasks in a workflow (collaborate) across the current systems was a significant pain point.

Research goals. Interview users to uncover what it means for them to collaborate on a workflow, what prevents them from collaborating in the current systems, and how they envision sharing parts of a workflow with other care team members. 

Methodology. We used in-depth one-on-one interviews with 6 team leaders to help us understand the team needs and dynamics from someone who understood all of the team roles. We asked some general questions but also engaged in some realistic role-playing in order to take the interviewee/participant through a journey to help uncover points in a workflow where collaboration could occur. 

Results. Users were enthusiastic about participating in our research and were able to describe how they could collaborate at many different points in their workflows. They provided a lot of valuable feedback including suggesting some new features that would support collaboration.

The research team compiled a list of collaboration opportunities and potential features, mapped these onto high-level workflows and team dimensions, and worked directly with the design team to come up with design options that were subsequently presented to users for validation. 

Photo: thecontextofthings.com