Barbara Miotto - Medcel Study App

The future resident doctor

The medical career is a specific and long-lasting process that requires a lot of effort and constant challenges. In Brazil, it is necessary to study at a university approved by the MEC (Ministry of Education) in a 5-year bachelor's degree to earn the title of Doctor, being a general practitioner. During these 5 years, 4 are dedicated to theoretical knowledge and generally the last year is dedicated to the practical training. Through this final year, the student has contact with all areas of the clinical practice, in different internships supervised by professors who are specialists in those areas. After graduation, the vast majority of doctors want to specialize through a medical residency, so that they can work as specialists. Without this title, they end up subjecting themselves to long shifts and a generalist performance. For approval in medical residences in Brazil, doctors must be approved in exams that resemble the entrance exam for undergraduate courses, with each institution responsible for applying the exams. Some have only one phase, and others include practical and theoretical phases. The conclusion is that to study for these tests of high competition and difficulty, combined with the routine of on-call or practical training, many doctors have little time and a lot of pressure to prepare for a defining moment in their careers.

To assist in the medical residency approval process, the company offers a course mediated by technology for doctors to prepare for the residency test.
The course is offered on a digital platform, accessible from several devices, but dependent on internet connection and with varying performance in the various browsers and devices.

Briefing

The product to be developed is an application that replicates the experience that the company offers in their web platform, with new features and the possibility of studying offline. The platform offered different types of content in 4 formats: videos, podcasts, e-books and exam simulations.
The idea wass to provide an optimized experience for students that adapts to the stressful routine of students doctors. Many spend more than 12 hours outside their homes and have long shifts. They need to study at less comfortable intervals and situations. Furthermore, it does not have the availability to attend face-to-face classes and need to create customized study routines.

Stakeholder Interviews

The first step in the research process to define the study application was to interview the company stakeholders and know the expectations and definitions prior to the project investigation and beginning of the design process.
I developed a script with questions that could bring out the specific demands of each department and each stakeholder. At the end of the script-writing process, I wrote a full article on this stage of the project, which can be accessed here .
The interviewees were: The CEO of the company, the CTO, the Project Manager, the Director of the Learning and Content, the Product Director, the Marketing Director.

From the interviews, inputs were generated, which were transformed into questions in the model "How might we ...? ".
This format allows the insights to be worked on by the design team during the execution of the project and that are not decisive and limiting factors for development, but generators of necessary questions during its execution.
The questions were grouped by similarity and by focus.
Then we filter and categorize the main points, defining them in questions to be solved and prototyped.

como podemos metodologia brainstorming design

At this stage, it was possible to map the long-term objectives and current problems seen by an internal view of the company.
With the current knowledge we imagine the possible paths that could build an optimized journey for our users and how we could answer the questions proposed by our stakeholders. These answers are certainly not the final answers to these questions, but they do allow us to generate new questions about the validity of these ideas and inputs to explore the concepts with users.

Investigating users' needs.

After defining the foundations of the project, we were able to understand that in order to develop a successful product in the eyes of the stakeholders, we would need to offer a quality experience to the students, to strengthen the brand, show security and ensure that they can realize the dream of being accepted at a medical residency and earn the title of specialist.

The students

The second step, therefore, was to define the parameters of an ideal experience for the student and how to enable a study routine that would assist in better performance in the tests.
With this objective in mind, I invited students currently studying on the platform to meet at the company. By meeting the students in person, I was able to understand, along with the other members of the design team, the individual realities of each student and common factors that guide the medical career. We brought topics about these students' daily lives, their career desires and how they deal with platform to measure your pains and needs.
Through a stripped-down conversation, we introduced several questions and listened to everything they had to say.
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--> The result of this research was translated into the creation of archetypes of the company's users:

Diego*

Needs

- Increase content consumption;
- Measure your performance;
- Discipline in studies.

Wishes

- Greater contact with other students and doctors in the area;
- Ease of accounting for the studied content;
- Improvements to the simulation tool.

Eduardo*

Needs

- Study between college and internship breaks;
- Save the cell phone internet plan;
- Discipline in studies;

Wishes

- Offline classes to study in the internship;
- Tool to organize your notes;
- Content aligned with the day-to-day of the internship.

Bruna*

Needs

- Read while traveling;
- Specific study plans for the institutions of your choice;
- Monitor consumption and personal performance;

Wishes

- Be able to measure the study by books;
- Social tools inserted within the platform;
- Personalized content for the institutions of your choice.

Thomas *

Needs

- Speed in the search for the content you need to study;
- Simple interface with few clicks;
- Specific content for the first years of graduation;

Wishes

- Study plan aligned to the university grid;
- Receive news and updates about medicine;
- Get to know better the proof of residence;

Understanding the learning flow

Using the inputs from the interviews of the stakeholders and students who use the platform, a study of the study patterns seen was carried out, in a mapping of the study and learning journey.
Our interest at the time was to see how the learning objects (Podcast, videos and simulations) were used during the students' study period (usually one year) and what the vocations of these objects are in the learning journey.