myGP TICKet
The Project Brief
As the sole UX/UI Designer at iPlato Healthcare, I was tasked with looking at how users of the myGP mobile app can prove that they have been vaccinated against COVID-19.
My Role
UX/UI Designer
The Team
Product Lead
iOS & Android devs
Duration
4 months
Launched
March 2021
The Problem
Businesses are not able to open their doors to customers in the UK, as it will contribute to the spread of COVID-19.
However, if all the customers that enter have been vaccinated and can prove it, they could enter and business could run as normal.
Once you are vaccinated against COVID-19, this information is entered into your NHS electronic health records. The myGP app has clinical system API integration with electronic health records and would therefore be able check a patient’s vaccination status.
Is there an opportunity here for the myGP app to be used by businesses as legitimate proof that someone has been vaccinated against COVID-19?
Requirements
The Users
Being able to prove your vaccination status using a legitimate app that will allow you to go back to accessing public spaces like you did before.
From a business perspective, this is a great way to go back to getting customers back into your venue without the risk of spreading the virus.
The Business
The myGP app has integration with 2 of the most popular clinical systems in England EMIS and SystemOne, therefore a large % of the population are able to create an account with the myGP app and have access to this feature.
With a marketing campaign behind it, this can be a great user acquisition opportunity for the app.
Research
The first step was understanding what was technically feasible. I and the Product Lead had a meeting with the CTO, Head of Engineering and Tech Architect to go through some early ideas on how we thought this might work and whether it was possible from a tech POV at all.
After the early meeting with Tech, we understood the limitations we had to work with when designing myGP TICKet. We then moved on to listing the high-level requirements that we needed to cover.
There were a number of name changes for the feature, which you will see referenced throughout in the photos. Starting with myGPASS, then MyTICKet, in the end settling on myGP TICKet.
Ideation
One of the first discussions we had with the developers was around wallet functionality, however, we decided against this and went with keeping the myGP TICKet development in-app. This was because some developers would need more investigation time on wallet development and could risk us not meeting deadlines if we take the risk of implementing this functionality when no one has worked on it before.
I looked at other digital passes/tickets that were being used already. The railway card app seemed like a template to go with as it’s widely used in the UK, so the functionality will be familiar to some users already.
I also looked at some other ‘vaccine passports’ that were discussed in news articles around the world to get a general look at how people might identify something as a vaccine passport.
User flow
I made an early user flow in order to visualize every stage a user could be in, from seeing the early promotion of the feature in the app to the feature becoming available. I also outlined alternative paths the user could go down, such as not yet having two rounds of vaccinations. Mapping out the flow this way really helped in seeing what screens will be required and any potential issues we need to tackle early,
Wireframes
With the help of the high-level user flow, I began putting together some low to mid-fidelity screens.
myGP TICKet as a name does not provide much information about what it is, therefore we agreed that there should be some educational screens when first opening the feature, explaining what myGP TICKet is and the benefits. We thought about the scenario where users will try to activate the ticket before they even had any vaccinations, or they only had their first round. Once the API call is made, instead of just showing an error we thought the process can be gamified, and reaching the point of being able to activate your ticket for the first time should feel like an accomplishment.
Rough sketches of how I imagined the myGP TICKet could look
If the user tried to activate their ticket but they haven’t yet met the requirements, we would show back to them what stage they are at in the process using the information we get back from the clinical system API. This allows the user to understand what the criteria is to get the ticket and also makes the user want to reach that final stage.
If the user is eligible to activate their ticket, they will need to upload a photo of themselves. This was the first introduction of photo uploading to the myGP app. The user would have one chance to upload a photo that was recent and clearly showed their face.
The ticket itself, had the green tick to signify the vaccination status. The logo would be animated to prevent screenshots and the QR code would hold the patient’s information.
User Testing
I then put together the screens above into a clickable prototype and invited users to try it out. We wanted to find out how they would get on when tasked with activating the ticket and whether they understood the different stages they are in.
Takeaways from the tests
“It should be the first thing I see when I open the app”
Most of the users commented that they would rather have the feature be activated from the top of the homepage rather than the profile section and once they exited out of myGP TICKet, it wasn’t apparent straight away how to open it again due to the profile section being visually similar to the ticket.
“This is controversial”
During testing, some users commented that myGP TICKet, or ‘Immunity Passports’ as they are generally called in the media, are discriminatory and will exclude people that cannot receive a COVID-19 vaccination due to health issues.
“Why not just notify me when I can activate it?”
Users expressed frustration about having to keep checking whether their vaccination status has been added to their records and therefore can activate their ticket. They would rather prefer a notification was sent as soon as they were eligible.
“How will you stop people from putting someone else’s photo?”
There were concerns around fraudulence and questions about how will businesses be able to validate the authenticity of myGP TICKet. What’s to stop someone from using someone else’s phone or photoshopping their picture.
Final UI
Based on the user testing, there was a lot of great feedback to consider and make improvements with. A second iteration was created, with another round of testing before hand over to devs.
Prototype of the final designs
Visibility
To address the issue of visibility raised during user feedback sessions, a fixed card was added to the home screen rather than having the activation exclusively in the profile section. This card will be the area where users can a) check their eligibility b) activate their ticket and c) once activated, the place from which they can open their ticket when they need to show it.
It was also decided that the ticket can also be opened from the Profile section too.
Didn’t make the cut
As it was December and we had a February deadline, we started to look at what screens we could sacrifice that wouldn’t impact the overall user experience, in order to shorten development time. I put together all the screens we had for the different user journeys, and we went through a process of deciding which are must-haves for the MVP and which could potentially be added in a later version.
We ended up removing the progress bar telling the user where they are in the vaccination process and sticking to a simple yes/no eligibility response.
Controversial?
To address the introduction of the ticket into the app as being controversial or the possibility that lots of people would stop using the app, we added a feedback prompt when users dismiss the promotional pop-up of the ticket that was going to be released before the feature. We can then gauge the % of users that would make use of the feature and those that wouldn’t use it would be asked to provide their reasons for not doing so.
When the feedback prompt was released, 83% of those that provided feedback selected ‘Yes’ to being open to using the feature.
Fraudulence
The concerns around fraudulence were one of the very first things we discussed during the discovery phase and always kept in the back of our minds throughout. One of the methods I thought could prevent screenshots was a simple logo animation that would change when moving your phone. In the end, we settled on showing the current time as a way to prevent screenshots/videos.
When thinking about how myGP TICKet would work in a real-life situation, staff will be at the entrance of the venue checking myGP TICKets before allowing someone to enter, so I added a disclaimer stating that the ticket should be shown alongside ID, therefore the profile photo, date of birth and name all need to match the ID of the customer, reducing the ability to use someone else’s myGP TICKet as your own.
Vaccination expiry
I also designed an expired state for the ticket which would be shown if the user opens the ticket a year after their last round of vaccinations. It would then look for a more up-to-date record of vaccinations every time the API is called in order to become valid again.
Developer Handoff
Along with the final UI in Figma, I also created the user flows and paths and then linked the screens in the flow to the relevant JIRA ticket. This made it easier for the mobile developers, QA, and other members of the development team to know exactly which part of the flow that user story was covering.
This user flow along with the prototype, was used to present to stakeholders how myGP TICKet will work in a more detailed way and it was also used to get sign-off from the Clinical Safety and Information Governance leads.
Post-Launch
The ticket design was featured in a Sunday Times piece discussing COVID passports in February 2021
Once the feature was out there, we monitored closely the performance during the staggered release for any P1 bugs that could not have been tested for in the test environment. One of the main issues that users found was the process of creating their NHS login account, which required a photo of their ID and a video selfie to prove their identity. The checks from the NHS can take up to 2 hours, once approved, the patient would come back to the app and agree to link NHS login with myGP. To optimize this we introduced a pop-up during onboarding to guide users and manage their expectations with NHS login so they were prepared.
The second biggest barrier was that some practices have online access to medical records disabled on their clinical systems, therefore blocking the required API call to check for vaccination status. Users had to contact their practice and ask them to enable this. Similar to the first issue, these were external factors that we didn’t have too much control over, however, we still aimed to address in the designs.