Doctor Search

My Role

I was the sole UX designer on the Doctor Finder. I worked with one product manager, four engineers and had some assistance from a visual designer.

Problem Statement

The doctor finder landing page was a browse-style drill down that required users to click through multiple pages before being shown any search results. The page was text-heavy and hard to use, especially on mobile. Once users finally did reach the results page, they were only shown doctors that had answered questions on the RealSelf site.

Customer Insights and Ideation

For the doctor finder I relied primarily on user interviews, surveys and watching users interact with the existing doctor finder. I looked to best practices for search and filtering, did a competitive analysis to see how similar medical sites were using search, and looked to patterns on e-commerce sites. 

Doctor Finder Landing Page Before

Doctor Finder Results Page Before

Doctor Finder User Flow

This user flow shows the various paths a user can take to get to results: browse, freeform search, search using autocomplete, results page and the empty state results page.

Doctor Finder Landing Page After

Doctor Finder Results Page After

Outcome

I introduced a search bar to the doctor finder page using elastic search which detected the user's location, helping to reduce the number of clicks it took to get to doctor results. I decided to show all doctor results, regardless of engagement. I knew from talking to RealSelf users that whether or not a doctor had answered questions on the site didn't factor into their decision in choosing a doctor.  

I added basic filters and sorting capabilities so users could select their doctors by what was most important to them. I surfaced distance to the user (which was important for those users seeking minimally invasive treatments) reviews, and any special offers the doctor had. To accommodate for increased, impression-based revenue, I added a placement for rotating sponsored results to the top of the search as well and a paid filter that would allow users to filter by certain products the doctor offered.

Overall, I increased doctor leads by 10% and increased doctor profile views by 4%. The changes received positive verbatim feedback from doctors, users, and a very thrilled sales team.