How do users expect to solve common problems with our app?

A tree test to determine the expected user path to solving commonly encountered client problems.

Background

Messaging is the most commonly utilized tool in the Cerebral patient app and is the primary way our clients resolve problems. The messaging experience and response time are common complaints from users and are often listed as a cancelation reason. The Cerebral product team wanted to invest in developing more self-serve messaging capabilities. One designer on that team wondered if there was another way to help our users solve common problems.

Goal

Determine if users are trying to self-solve common problems elsewhere in the app prior to reaching out via messaging for help.

Hypothesis

Users who need help with a medication refill, look for information and assistance in the prescription tab of the app prior first and then message their care team for help.

Users who need to schedule or reschedule an appointment try to do so in the appointments tab prior to messaging their care team.

Methodology

Tree test on Maze

Timeline

2 weeks

Role

Lead researcher. I collaborated with two designers from the team that came up with these hypotheses.

Outcome

The hypothesis was correct.

Users overwhelmingly navigated first to the prescriptions tab to solve the common problems of a)learning when their next refill would be and b) requesting a refill.

Users overwhelmingly navigated first to the Appointments tab to schedule or reschedule an appointment.

Not allowing users to complete these tasks within these tabs actually caused a lot of navigation confusion, with some user paths being upward of 12 clicks to request a refill or schedule an appointment.

Impact

The product manager chose to move forward with continued investments in self-serve messaging. The results of this research will be used during a full redesign of the app in 2023.