Dental Lifeline Network

Dental Lifeline Network

A nationwide non-profit that has been in existence for over 40 years, Dental Lifeline Network (DLN) provides comprehensive dental services to the elderly, disabled, veterans, and others in need. However, their website needed some work, as their application process consistently saw a high drop-off rate, and the design proved unintuitive, especially for the demographics they serve. As such, my team was brought on by the organization’s Marketing Coordinator in order to improve both the volunteer and patient application processes, along with the overall layout of the site.

Overview

Process:

• Competitive analysis and design research

• Heuristic Evaluation

• User research

• Stakeholder and user interviews

• Contextual inquiry

• Card sorting analysis

• Site mapping

• Sketching

• Wireframing,

• Lo-fi prototype

• User testing

• Iterating

• Hi-fi prototype

Team

Bri Shaffer

Inea Padilla

Role:

Needing some direction, I took over the roles of scrum master and lead researcher, along with participating in the project’s ideation and prototyping.

Tools:

• Pen & paper

• Sketch

• Craft

• InVision

• Capian

We started off by delving into Dental Lifeline Network, examining its history and mission, before beginning on a heuristic evaluation of the site, where we quickly found an array of problems, ranging from usage of unclear company language, to buttons that were illegible to much of DLN’s clientele due to age and vision problems. Afterwards, we conducted a “competitive” analysis of other non-profits, both dental and more general, in order to see how DLN is able to differentiate itself, while also trying to find best practices as far as naming conventions, layout, etc.

Experiencing difficulty because of the sensitive nature of the patient experience, we started off by reading reviews of DLN online, consistently seeing how excited patients were for the procedure, but also that they experienced frustration with the unclear requirements, long waits, and overall application process. From there we examined the Google analytics for the DLN site, reinforcing what we already knew about the difficulty of the process, as evidenced through high drop-off rates with each consecutive page. Then, while we were sadly unable to reach any patients, we were able to interview various dental practitioners who gave us insight into the problems faced by dental offices in general, along with issues that had arisen while working with Dental Lifeline, such as unknown complications with patients that ended up requiring much more extensive work than advertised originally.

Gladys: The Patient

Goals

• Be able to enjoy eating without pain

• Find the cheapest and fastest way to receive treatment

Frustrations

• Struggles with new technology

• Doesn’t have dental insurance

• Chewing has become painful

• Afraid of going to the dentist

Claire: The Mediator

Goals

• Manage her time more effectively

• Find a better money collection system

• Help as many people as possible

Frustrations

• Client intake

• Application processing

• Collecting Medicaid

Noticing in the analytics that around 40% of users access DLN on their phones, along with generally being best practice, we started off with mobile designing, trying to make the site more accessible on phones, while also helping to make us realize exactly what features were most important to include in the process.

Realizing the need to simplify the site right from the start, we created a more intuitive header and footer with clearer directions on where to go, along with redoing the home and landing pages for patient and volunteer signups. In addition, we added a profile component that would allow dentists to see what patients they had coming up, and what cases they had treated through DLN in the past. Less visibly, I edited the introduction to the general application to highlight certain requirements, take away some unprofessional language, and incorporate a more consistent corporate voice.