I really enjoyed module IXD303 as it gave me the creative freedom to create my own brief based off UX healthcare. At first it was a really daunting thought as I had to start by researching areas that UX design could improve and there was many options for me to think about from the many issues within hospitals, to health centres or remote care. Through doing lots of research primarily based on medical care in Northern Ireland, I settled on the idea of A&E emergency care and the design question “How might we design a product to help improve peoples experience with wait times when visiting A&E due to illness or with a loved one?”

This brief allowed me to explore wider picture of the issues the NHS A&E face and be able to conduct competitor analyse based on how other countries and health systems have battled these problems and how I could apply it to my solution. This allowed me to be able to do lots of research which is one of my favourite parts of the process as it allows you to learn from other peoples experiences of what works and what didn’t work. I was also able to further my skills when it came to producing user personas and expand these into empathy maps and user journey maps to think deeper about how these users will interact with the product and how we can overall improve their experience. As well as being able to build upon and further improve my existing skills within the design process, I also liked learning new things like as what a design sprint is and being able to take part in a condensed version of one myself. It really helped me realise why user personas and journey mapping is so important and how they don’t have to be the most aesthetically pleasing as long as they get across the users feelings and opinions. I also really enjoyed learning about service design as this is something we have not really touched upon before so it was really good to learn more about it and be introduced into service design blueprints as this may be something they will use on placement.

I am really happy with the outcome of my project as it allowed me to work on things in the process I enjoyed such as researching, taking into consideration how my product would impact potential users but also working on improving my branding skills and creating a better UI as this is something I have struggled with in the past. I am really proud of my UI for my A&E app “check” as it uses consistent branding and I feel like I have pulled the whole thing to look like one rather than a bunch of screens. However if I was to complete this task again, I would further develop my app so it was able to provide advice to people who are not sick or injured enough to attend A&E but need to attend minor injuries or book in with their GP, I had created one screen but I would love to improve this further. I would also explore secondary palettes earlier on when I found decided on my primary palette as I found it really hard later on to determine what colours to use for my secondary set that would not only look good but also have a high contrast so it was accessible. I would instead just chose my whole colour palette and then make the relevant tweaks if it did not work.

Overall I really liked this module as it allowed me to put what I had learned into action and produce an app that could provide change to the NHS and further medical industry while also improving the day to day A&E users experience when using this service. I was really interesting to learn a lot deeper about what service design was and how the methods used for it can be applied to my project to help produce a better A&E service app.