Simple Interact

Fixing accessibility issues in a healthcare SMS system.


Role: UX Researcher (Micro-internship project)
Timeframe: 2 months
Project Type: Healthcare platform UX audit and redesign
Project Goals

Simple Interact is a healthcare automation platform that streamlines front-office tasks like patient intake, appointment scheduling, and feedback collection. As part of a micro-internship, I evaluated a new SMS-based communication feature that allows staff to message patients directly and guide them through form completion via mobile.

This study focused on assessing usability from both healthcare staff and patient perspectives to ensure the SMS experience was intuitive, accessible, and aligned with healthcare workflows.

        Project Goals:
         1.      Evaluate the usability of the SMS feature for staff and patients.
        2.     Identify key usability and accessibility issues within the messaging and form workflows.
        3.     Prioritize issues by severity and recommend actionable improvements.

    My Role

    I led the research process, which included:

    • Conducting a heuristic evaluation using Nielsen’s usability principles.
    • Performing a task analysis for both user types.
    • Identifying 17 critical UX and accessibility issues, including WCAG 2.1 compliance gaps.
    • Creating clear, actionable Jira tickets for the dev team based on research findings.
    • Proposing inclusive design solutions tailored to healthcare-specific user needs.

    Methods
    • Task Analysis: Mapped critical tasks for both user groups—e.g., message management for staff and form completion via SMS for patients.

    • Heuristic Evaluation: Assessed interface elements against usability heuristics (e.g., system visibility, error prevention, flexibility, and consistency). Severity was ranked using a 0–4 Likert scale.

    • Accessibility Audit: Reviewed mobile and desktop interfaces against WCAG 2.1 guidelines to flag and recommend fixes for accessibility gaps.

    Key Insights  

    For Staff:
    • Lack of onboarding and feedback made it hard to understand system status.
    • Inconsistent design and absence of undo options increased error risk.
    For Patients:
    • Users couldn’t edit or resubmit forms after submission.
    • No multilingual support or validation for incomplete submissions, which caused frustration and workflow blocks.

    Prioritized Recommendations

    Staff-side:
    • Add contextual training (e.g., tooltips or first-time-use guides).
    • Implement confirmation prompts before irreversible actions (e.g., archiving).
    • Standardize page layout and design elements across workflows.
    Patient-side:
    • Add mandatory fields and form validation to prevent incomplete submissions.
    • Enable language switching and allow users to edit forms post-submission.
    Prioritized Recommendations
    • Focus on severity: Prioritizing critical issues ensures meaningful impact without overwhelming teams.
    • Guided onboarding matters: Training and feedback mechanisms improve confidence and reduce errors.
    • Iterative feedback loops: Continuous engagement with users during development leads to faster issue resolution and better outcomes.