Improving the adoption of video calls in online consultations
A consultation on the MFine app can happen through 3 communication channels - video call, audio call or chat. This project was intended at increasing the consultations happening through video calls. Several changes to both product and process were made to achieve this. We introduced multiple nudges for the doctor to initiate a video consult, created new real estate in app for video consultations, and brought parity in web experience with the app experience.
Objective
Increase the video consult initiates and completions on MFine by adding subtle persuasions on the product nudging the doctor to start a video consult and making it easier for the patients to join.
My Role
As the sole designer, I worked closely with the product manager and analyst to identify the problem areas causing low initiates and completions. Post this, I strongly advocated integrating more user research into the design process. This resulted in creation of a new communication channel for gathering insights and early product feedback from the in-house doctors. Based on these insights, more user research, and competition analysis, I designed a new experience for video consultation.
What was done?
Based on the insights from user research and competition analysis, we made the following changes:
- Introduced room concept for video consults.
- More contextual nudges for patients to provide necessary permission and educating them on how to provide them.
- Introduced multiple product nudges in the user flow to initiate video consult.
Impact
- Overall video consultation initiates increased by 28p.p (from 41% to 69%).
- Video consultation completions increased by 12p.p (from 65% to 77%).
- Permission errors decreased by 9p.p (from 12% to 3%).
The Problem
Most patients expect consultations to take place via video call, but only 27% of current consultations do. The rest of the consultations were happening either through audio calls or chat conversations. The cause of such a low adoption rate lies on both sides of the user personas. The initiation rate for video consultations is low on the doctor's side, and the acceptance and completion rates are low on the patient's side. Data analysis and interviews with doctors and patients helped us understand what's causing this.
Insights from data
- Video calls are initiated only for 41% of all the consultations happening on MFine.
- Of these, 35% of the video call do not get fulfilled.
- Diving deeper into the 35%, we realised 19% of patients are not accepting video calls and the rest 16% are not fulfilled due to permission errors.
- Patients not accepting video call is due to any of the following reasons - patient not online (15%), patient missed the ringer (4.3%), browser not supported (0.5%) and connection error (0.2%).
- Permission errors includes user not giving audio and video permission required for video call.\
Learnings
Need product intervention to improve the video call initiation by the doctor.
Patient should be able to join the video consult even if they miss the video call ringer.
Permission errors to be reduced by educating and informing users in advance.
Insights from user research
- Patients are unaware of what to expect for a video call. Some people expect a link that they can join while others expect a call ringer from the doctor.
- If the users miss the video call ringer, there is no way for them to join the call or call back the doctor.
- Patients try to show their documents through video call, rather than uploading them in the chatroom. Hence the clarity of audio and video is of at-most importance.
- Additionally, patient might not be able to explain everything properly to the doctor. Seeing the patient help the doctor decipher a lot of things. Doctors observe quite a lot of things during a video consult to gather insights.
- Doctors makes notes, checks case details and checks attachments while in a video call.
- Multi-party videos are quite common. Currently doctor and patients resort to all types of hacks to make this work like using multiple devices or a caretaker doing the consultation for the patient from a remote location.
Learnings
Patient should be able to join the video consult even if they miss the video call ringer.
Patient and doctor should be able to upload or check documents during call
There is strong requirement to have multiple people within a video call.
Design Direction
- There should be more persuasive nudges for the doctor to initiate video call
- Permission errors should be informed in prior to both patient and doctor so that they can be prepared. They should also be educated on how to provide permissions.
- There should be a permanent real-estate within the app for video call related experiences.
- It should be easy to switch between video consultation and chat to check other details.
Solution Space
Video Room for consultations
Video room is a permanent real estate within the consultation space for all video call related communications and interactions. The consultation space now has a chat room and video room as two tabs as the mode of communication. This makes switching between both the modes of communication very easy. A room concept also allows participants to enter and exit at any time, unlike a call, which requires both participants to be online for connection to be established.
Other Scenarios
Joining the video room
Nudges on doctor app to initiate video call
To improve the video initiates by doctor, multiple nudges where introduced contextually in the doctor user flow.
Impact Created
Overall video consultation initiates increased by 28p.p (from 41% to 69%).
Video consultation completions increased by 12p.p (from 65% to 77%).
Permission errors decreased by 9p.p (from 12% to 3%).
__ That’s it. Thank you for your time.