ROLE
UI/UX Designer
TEAM
6 Designers
DURATION
April - June, 2025
TOOLS
Figma, Google Workspace, Slack, Notion
About Project Teams
Project Teams is a quarterly (8-week) program hosted by Design at UCI, where students pitch and design a product from ideation to hi-fidelity prototype. By the end of the program, each team presents their work to a panel of industry judges. The Spring 2025 theme was Design for Social Good.
Our team set out to help travelers have a more seamless experience while seeking medical care abroad.
Design Process
🤝 EMPATHIZE
The Problem
Many travelers struggle to access timely and affordable healthcare abroad due to uncertainty around local medical costs, unfamiliar medications, and difficulty explaining their symptoms - often leading to stress, delayed care, and inadequate treatment. How might we help U.S. travelers confidently access trustworthy medical care while abroad?
🧪 RESEARCH
Surveys
To better understand and solve the problem statement, we conducted a user survey asking about travelers' experiences while seeking medical assistance abroad. We had 48 respondents, and the main pain point that we gathered from our data revolved around the ability to navigate a foreign healthcare system.
Key insights:
Interviews
I conducted 2 interviews (7 total) with participants who had recently traveled internationally.
Key insights:
Limited knowledge of medical systems abroad
Concerns of “overwhelming cost” and “language barriers”
Competitive Analysis
After learning more about people's experiences with finding healthcare abroad, I wanted to take a closer look at what tools people are already using and where these tools fall short. Through the surveys, interviews, and my own market research, I identified 4 competitors and evaluated them based on features such as geolocation, symptom translation, and cost transparency.
📓 DEFINE
Research Conclusions
Our research revealed that U.S. travelers want more than just directions to a nearby clinic. They're seeking trust and support in a moment of need. Across our research, these are the common themes that we heard:
Users want:
Clear communication tools to explain symptoms and understand diagnoses when facing language barriers
Transparent information on:
Cost of care
Insurance compatibility
Country-specific healthcare guidelines and protocols
A reliable way to find, evaluate, and navigate to health facilities
User Persona
To ensure that our design decisions addressed the real pain points uncovered during research, we created a user persona that represents our ideal user. Meet Lina Nguyen!
Solution to the Problem
Our app lets travelers quickly navigate unfamiliar healthcare systems, seamlessly communicate health issues with foreign medical staff, and enjoy peace of mind by staying informed.
✍️ DESIGN
Low Fidelity Mockups
With our user needs in mind, we identified three main user flows essential to MediMap:
Onboarding — to quickly set up personal and health related information for a tailored experience
Health Facility Search — to find nearby clinics with clear info on location, language spoken, and ratings
Symptom Logging and Writeup — to help users communicate how they’re feeling
Medium Fidelity Prototype
As we moved forward in the design process, our team aligned on a clear visual direction for MediMap. We began refining layout decisions, defining branding style, and connecting each screen with interactions that reflected how real users would engage with the app.
Sample changes from lo-fi to mid-fi:
📓 TEST
Usability Testing
To evaluate how intuitive and effective our current designs are, we conducted a round of usability testing to understand how real users use our key features such as completing the onboarding process, navigating the filtration system, and recording symptoms. We invited 3 participants and gave them realistic tasks while observing their behavior, time-on-task, error rates, and think-aloud feedback. Here's what we found:
Strengths:
Quick task completion
Visual design
Straightforward and clear UI
Areas to Improve:
Unintuitive filtering
Compacted information display
Unexpected actions after interaction
Visual Hierarchy
✨ FINAL DESIGN
Final Prototype
After conducting usability testing and collecting feedback, we iterated on our design to address key usability issues and improve the overall experience
Changes Made:
Repositioned filter button to be more visible
Refined spacing and layout of General Information Page
Enhanced onboarding flow to be more interactive
Improved writeup flow to be more intuitive and predictable
Polished minor visual details
That being said, here is our finalized high-fidelity prototype:
LESSONS LEARNED
Reflection
MediMap was a truly rewarding experience that pushed me outside of my comfort zone. I’m especially proud of the healthcare-focused research we conducted and the micro-interactions and components I learned to design along the way. Our hard work paid off and we are so honored to have won first place out of nine teams.
Looking back, I'd like to highlight three takeaways from this project:
Ambition comes with challenges — We had three main flows which led to a rapid increase in the number of screens and interactions. This quickly became challenging to manage the system’s complexity while maintaining consistency. This taught me the importance of constantly revisiting our research insights and design goals to ensure every feature stayed true to our users’ needs and MediMap’s identity.
Buddy system works — Because our team had varying levels of Figma experience, we implemented a buddy system that paired a more experienced designer with someone newer to the tool. As a Figma lead, I had the opportunity to mentor my teammate and share shortcuts and design practices that made our workflow more efficient and our design more seamless.
Communication is key - With a solution as complex and ambitious as ours, it was important to regularly communicate with each other to ensure that we are all on the same page. We committed to meet up at least twice a week. This commitment is a huge reason why our solution was successful.
Moving forward:
I would revisit our usability test results and run a second round of testing to validate the final prototype. I’d also like to refine the micro-interactions further to make the experience as realistic as possible. Rather than adding new features, my priority would be to iterate on the existing ones to ensure they are as intuitive, reliable, and user-centered as possible.
