Simple Interact 2-Way SMS: For Patient-Staff Telehealth

An evaluation of a HIPAA-compliant telehealth SMS system designed to streamline communication between patients and staff — revealing usability issues and providing actionable redesign recommendations.

📌PROJECT SCOPE

Client: Simple Interact, a Healthcare SaaS company
Timeframe: 4 weeks (part-time)
My Role: Qualitative Researcher, Evaluator, Co-Author
Team: Noah Wheeler (Vice President of Product), Ben Alfonsin, Mesoma Iloanusi
Methods: Usability Testing, Task Analysis, Heuristic Evaluation, Accessibility Compliance
Tools: Figma, Nielsen Heuristics, Google Workspace

🪟 Project Overview

🚀 CLIENT KICKOFF
Simple Interact wanted to evaluate the usability of its new 2-Way SMS Chat feature before a mass rollout. The feature allows staff and patients to communicate asynchronously, helping reduce hold times and increase patient satisfaction.

🔎 OBJECTIVES

Conduct heuristic evaluation of the SMS feature.
Identify usability problems in both patient and staff interfaces.
Provide actionable, prioritized recommendations for product improvement.

✏️ NOTES
Our evaluation followed UX best practices and was guided by academic literature on telehealth systems. We applied Nielsen’s heuristics and scored issues using a validated medical UX severity scale.

👩🏻‍🔬 Methodology

Design: Expert heuristic evaluation of SMS chat system

Task Flows: 2 patient tasks, 2 staff tasks

Heuristics: 10 adapted from Tang et al. (2006), Aabel & Abeywarna (2018)

Analysis: Severity rating, pattern grouping, redesign recommendations

Deliverables: White paper and executive presentation to VP of Product

🤿 Deep Dive

1️⃣ HEURISTIC SELECTION

We reviewed research papers that focused on healthcare and communication systems. This gave us a list of 23 heuristics, or best practices. Many of them were similar to each other or based on Nielsen’s well-known usability principles. We narrowed the list down to 10 key heuristics that best fit the tasks in our study and the goals of the system.

2️⃣ TASK ANALYSIS

We independently analyzed workflows for both patients and staff, identifying bottlenecks and steps that violated the heuristics. Tasks included submitting patient intake forms, archiving messages, and scheduling appointments.

3️⃣ HEURISTIC EVALUATION

We rated each problem by severity:

17 total usability issues
13 in the staff interface
4 in the patient interface
5 categorized as catastrophic

Frequent violations: Anti-error design, feedback, and training

4️⃣ STAFF-FACING ISSUES

System Learning Curve Was Too Steep

No onboarding or tooltips
Archived chats couldn’t be recovered
UI inconsistencies created confusion

Recommendations:

Add first-time-use guides
Allow reversible actions (undo archive)
Standardize navigation elements

5️⃣ PATIENT-FACING ISSUES

Limited Error Protection and Feedback

Forms could be submitted without required images
Inability to edit or translate form content post-submission

Recommendations:

Prevent premature form submission
Integrate translation API
Enable form edit requests

💭 Reflection

Industry Takeaways

Cross-platform experiences must account for multiple mental models.
Defensive design prevents costly errors in regulated environments.
Heuristic evaluations are a low-cost, high-impact method for improving UX.

Personal Takeaways

I learned to bridge industry goals with academic methods for quick product improvements.
Collaborating with a VP gave me insight into product strategy and stakeholder communication.
Our research was summarized in a white paper, which informed real product decisions.