WomenCare Global
UX | PRODUCT DESIGN
Designing the UX and brand for a global healthcare company’s distributor portal
WomenCare Global (DKT Womancare) is an international non-profit organization committed to empowering, educating and enabling women and girls to make informed choices and access critical reproductive health products and services. DKT WomanCare’s mission is to increase the number of public and private health providers who can access and utilize full range contraceptives and reproductive health technologies. DKT is the exclusive global distributor and marketer of the Ipas MVA technology in more than 100 countries around the world.
Dedicated to providing options for women when it comes to their reproductive health no matter where they live, DKT Womancare specializes in the global registration of drugs and devices, and in aiding manufacturers to improve their processes to meet international best practices. There were two primary goals of this project:
Create a distributor customer service portal to support the ordering, distribution, training, and support of MA/MVA medical device products with eCommerce functionality, integrated CRM, training, and support tools.
Create a public-facing website for the DKT WomanCare brand which serves medical professionals in 120 countries and includes localization support for 8 languages.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Identifying business requirements
Building a customer service distributor portal for a global health organization required close collaboration with our client team to ensure the technology and user experience closely modeled their operational process. During the first phase of the project, another UX support team member and I worked closely with the client to understand the ordering and fulfillment process for the medical devices they aimed to expand to new regions and countries.
We documented these finding in everything from google docs, audio files, rough sketches, and notes to ensure our strategy factored in the intricacies of the distributor workflow, and working with the development team to ensure the business requirements and technical strategy were aligned. Our work needed to be in line with DKT Womancare’s vision for growth, increasing the capacity of trained health providers to deliver services, and building a resilient supply chain with existing partners.
ordering and fulfillment WORKFLOW
“I’m a distributor that wants to place an order.”
After working closely with the client team to identify business requirements and workflows that the distributor customer service portal needed to support through low-fidelity wireframes, I mocked up higher-fidelity wireframes in Sketch. This format enabled greater detail for including documentation surrounding the functional requirements and technical strategy derived our development team.
Documenting Technical Requirements
One of the core pieces of functionality that were essential for the product was the ordering system. The ordering system included an order form where authorized distributors can order DKT products. The form allowed the user to order multiple products (1-10) and any quantity of those products.
This piece of functionality required close collaboration with the client team to get right. For example, we had to understand which products to include, how orders worked currently, and how shipping requirements were documented. Essentially, we were creating a digital ordering system that would allow the distributor to place an order request for medical devices more efficiently, and make changes and updates to this order throughout the ordering and fulfillment lifecycle.
User Scenarios and Workflows
I utilized workflows to document business requirements and delineate what steps in the workflow the technology we were building needed to support, and what was outside of the technology. User scenarios helped keep our teams organized with what screens related to specific workflows. Because this was such a large scale project, it was essential to consistently document how the business requirements, technical requirements, and UX stitched together.
SUPPORT WORKFLOW
“I’m a distributor looking for support.”
Another core piece of functionality that was essential for the product was offering support and resources to the distributor throughout the ordering and fulfillment process. The portal supported a notification system to assist distributors with the status of their orders. With the notification system, users would see on-screen messages potentially indicating order status, unread messages, and other vital messages created by site admins.
Additionally, we built on-site forms, similar to help tickets, where a user could ask questions and get a response from a site admin. Then, if necessary, both users could have a back-forth conversation regarding the ticket order. The on-site forms operate much like a traditional customer service help ticket.
This functionality and user experience enabled the distributor to feel supported throughout the ordering and fulfillment process, aiming to reduce friction in the user experience.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Marketing website
The information architecture for the marketing site, though much smaller in scale than the Laravel-based content management system we built for the distributor portal, it was still a critical communication channel for the DKT Womancare team.
Working closely with the client team, we took the key goals and “voice” they wanted to achieve with the site, coupled with audience research, to construct the information architecture for the marketing site. We focused on their global impact, and resources on how their products were helping women all over the world.
DESIGN CHALLENGE
How might we take a mission and education-focused approach on a sensitive topic?
In the initial stages of the project, we worked closely with the client team to understand the perceptions and challenges surrounding DKT WomanCare’s service offerings and mission.
Focus on Mission
As a designer, it was essential to have a tactical strategy for how to tell the story of the DKT Womancare brand, to guide the messaging and visual communications strategy. According to DKT Womancare, the Ipas MVA is the “world’s most utilized, safe and effective surgical abortion technology and can also be used to manage post-partum hemorrhaging, early pregnancy loss and endometrial biopsy.” As the exclusive global distributor of Ipas MVA technology in more than 100 countries, DKT Womancare medical device distributors help expand this technology to new countries, by working with providers to train them how to use this technology, as well as secure new registrations. I referred to this mission statement throughout the design process to ensure all design elements aligned with this story.
Framing the Issue
It was essential to take a strategic lens to the design and messaging approach for the public-facing marketing site. By starting to understand the core audiences for the public site (the general public, providers, and partners), we conducted a comparative analysis in the form of moodboards to serve as a benchmarking tool for how other health organizations provided an education-first approach to the design and UX.
Planned Parenthood, a nonprofit organization that provides sexual health care in the United States and globally,
was a reliable source of inspiration for the design approach. Their website has an information-first and transparent
communication strategy and approach that is effective in providing people with the resources they need.
DESIGN Approach
Designing the experience
Combining DKT Womancare brand colors and photo strategy, I created a simple design for the marketing site that focused on their global impact, as well as how they helped women around the world.
Factoring in Localization
Though we launched the site with an English language version, we built in the functionality to localize the content adding support for an unlimited number of languages/countries. This functionality influenced the approach I took to the design layouts and patterns used across the site. I worked with our development team to identify unique content modules (design patterns) that would be used across the site to ensure the design was flexible enough to account for various languages and character counts.
Photo Strategy
We took a straight-forward and mission-focused approach to the messaging and photo strategy, focusing on a woman from diverse backgrounds to show DKT Womancare’s global reach. It was necessary to factor providers and medical professionals into the photo strategy, because they were one of the core audiences for the site, and because they were the ones providing women with the safe and effective surgical abortion technology across the world.
MOVING FORWARD
Streamlining Product Ordering and Fulfillment
Since designing a new Laravel-based content-management system and ordering system for DKT Womancare, they now have a streamlined way to place order requests for MVA technology, streamlining their expansion efforts to providers in new countries and regions.
As the lead UX designer on this project, I was fortunate to have worked with a talented team to make the vision for the customer service portal and marketing site a reality. Big shout out to the internal team for their collaborative effort, Backpockt for product management and UX support, Sean Hudson for technical direction, digital strategy, and front and backend development, and Jasand Pereza for frontend and backend development.