UX Portfolio

What is Travel ResourceNetwork?

A position in travel nursing can be a very lucrative and rewarding career. A travel nurse is typically contracted to work at a specific location for a limited amount of time.

These contracts, otherwise known as assignments, usually last for 13-week periods and can often extend out to 52-week assignments, depending on the client's need.

Travel Resource Network aims to change that. The idea is a unified mobile application that only sources travel assignments for these clinicians.

Problem

Sourcing contract assignments can sometimes be problematic for travel nurses as they are usually navigating in and out of a handful of career websites. Not to mention that the steps in creating accounts and filtering out "non-nursing positions" when looking for contract assignments - a process that can prove to be quite tedious and time consuming.

Solution

Travel Resource Network solves this problem by eliminating the redundancy found in creating multiple user accounts with various career applications.

As a mobile application dedicated to the travel nursing sector that is only meant for travel nurses - introduces a one-stop-shop benefit for users to review locations where assignments are offered, preview pay packages, and obtain any other information relevant to the assignment, all while keeping the primary focus and goal for the end-user in the forefront.

UX Design Process

01 User Research

Competitive Analysis and User Surveys

02 Consumer Strategy

Personas and User Stories

03 UX Analysis

User Flows and Wireframes

04 Branding & Identity

Logo and Style Guide

05 Visual & UI Design

Hi-Fi Prototype and User Testing

User Surveys

Understanding Our Users

For the first step in this discovery phase, I needed to gather more information regarding my target audience, so I began with creating and distributing user surveys. Since this market was going to be a niche market, I solely targeted the nursing community.

With a former background in nurse recruitment services, I was able to leverage my contacts in this community who were more than willing to take my survey and pass it along to their colleagues.

At the conclusion of the survey, I tallied a total of 23 responses which were analyzed with the following results being documented:

100% of the respondents used mobile applications to source information for professional and personal use daily
A little over half (52.2%) of the respondents used their mobile devices as an outlet to source their next travel assignment
Indeed, LinkedIn and Craigslist were the three top job sites used when looking for new travel assignments
All respondents (100%) collectively agreed that if a new application were to be introduced to the market whereby the product was solely intended for travel nurses, they would be interested in using the product.

VIEW USER SURVEY

User Personas

Who Are Our Users?

The ending data collected from the surveys and interviews had provided me with more in-depth information regarding my prospective users. The information collected were then used to create a couple of personas of who my target users would be.

Competitive Analysis

How can Travel RN be different in the market?

Although Travel Resource Network was being created for a niche group of users, I still needed to figure out how to differentiate the product from other popular competitors who already had a large footprint in the job search industry.

Among the information collected in my user surveys, I uncovered three main job sites that travel nurses were already using - Indeed, LinkedIn and (surprisingly) Craigslist. It was these three sites that seemed to be the top choices. Indeed proved to be the most popular based mainly off its global branding and recognition.

LinkedIn ran second place with its main benefit of a networking platform similar to the likes of a social network but with more of a professional appearance. Craigslist was an interesting option. Not aesthetically pleasing to the eye, the user interface was familiar to existing users who already used Craigslist for its other services.

Drawing from my years of experience in sales / business development and marketing, I got to work in crafting an MVP that borrowed certain strengths from each of the competitors. What if Travel Resource Network had a platform that had a clean interface like Indeed, and easy to remember features (minus the additional noise) like Craigslist - but with a user-centered focus strictly on travel nurses.

VIEW COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

Branding and Identity

Conceptual Ideation

Given the information I had collected thus far, I was able to begin putting some branding ideas to paper. I wanted to stay focused and accountable to my users, so the concepts had to resonate and represent the first phase of consistency in this case - the first impression is the lasting impression.

Some of my inital concepts of branding names were:

Nurse Travel
Flight Nurse
Go RN

I had some other concepts as well, but those three stood out as strong possibilities. However, given that the overall goal was to connect travel nurses to assignments, including all pertinent information related to the assignment, I eventually came up with and selected Travel RN - with the R & N standing for resource network

The brand as a product needed to capture the thought processes of travel nurses who sourced contract assignments all over the country. Travel RN would create a platform of connectivity among these nurses, as well as potential employers, providing a smooth transition of information readily available regarding each assignment.

In addition, displaying all information regarding each assignment with location and activities playing an important role - the product had to display something fun or eye catching about the area. After all, it isn't always about work when traveling.

Logo Design

Nurses move around a lot and are constantly taking notes when caring for patients, so I wanted to represent that movement. I chose a permanent marker style typography with a paper airplane design, as I wanted to imbue a feeling of constant movement and travel.

Typography

Although the permanent marker typeface was chosen as the primary, it is only to be used for the logo piece. Raleway and Lusitana were a pair of complimentary fonts chosen because each represented a feeling of warmth alongside a sense of functionality and purpose.

Colors

The primary colors chosen were red, blue and green. Red represented a sense of urgency. Blue evokes a feeling of calm. And green would imbue trust. All three colors are representative to the characters of a nurse.

Primary

Style Guide

VIEW STYLE GUIDE

Information Architecture

User Flows and User Stories

Using additional data from my surveys, I then set out to create user stories and user flows. Beginning with user stories, I needed to highlight the main features of the product.

Once the user stories were completed and I had all the basic features written out, I then translated them to user flows which then provided me with a blueprint of how the users would interact with the product to complete certain tasks.

In taking it a step further, I got to work in creating a Site Map of the application that would list out all the functions and features of the application. The Site Map would ensure I did not skimp out on any basic functionalities that the application would need to qualify as an MVP at launch.

Paper Prototype

Framing the idea that it all begins with a sketch. I began drawing up basic and very raw wireframes for a paper prototype to test on some users. Bribing a few nursing friends with coffee in exchange for tests -- I briefly explained the what the sketches represented.

After the completion of the tests, it was concluded that a home page should illustrate places of potential assignments rather than having the user land directly in their profile page after signing up as a new user or logging in as a returning user. I notated the feedback and began making refinements to the original sketches.

Wireframes

Now it came down to giving the sketches a more clean and visual appeal that would be representative of what the application would look like to users when the second round of testing took place.

Prior to starting the development of the wireframes, I made sure to implement the feedback received from the former tests conducted on paper -- creating a home page that illustrated potential assignments right from the start rather than having users take unnecessary steps to find it.

VIEW WIREFRAMES

User Testing

Once the wireframes were completed, I then used Figma's prototyping feature to create a simple and clickable prototype in order to test out certain tasks relevant to my user stories. I linked the appropriate wireframes to test out the following tasks as a new user to the product.

Create an Account
View User Profile
View Job Listings

The ending proved successful with recommended changes. I then set out to work on building high-fidelity mockups that would aid me with a full-scale MVP for additional testing.

VIEW USER TESTING

Visual Design

High Fidelity Mockups

It was now the time to implement the usage of color and incorporate images to the overall design. Using the style guide I created for the product, I began placing the necessary UI elements to bring my initial wireframes to life.

A/B Preference Tests

During the design and buildout of the high-fidelity mockups, I decided to conduct two preference tests on the UI designs.

Preference Test 1

In this test, I wanted to find out which design looked more aesthetically pleasing. Eighty percent (80%) chose the second design stating that it looked a lot cleaner and more professional, from a clinical perspective. The first design was a little too dark, and the background (although nice) seemed to display too much noise and distracting from the overall design.

Preference Test 2

In this test, I wanted to find out which was more easily identifiable for users when sorting assignments of those positions that have already been applied to vs. those that have not been applied to. Ninety percent (90%) chose the first design because it was just straight forward and simple enough for user definition.

Mock-Up Iterations

After going through a number of preferential testing, I was able to gather the feedback and results from my testers and begin implementing some changes to the overall design. These changes were subtle in nature, but the impact it had on the overall user experience of the application would prove to be substantial in terms of continued usage and ROI.

VIEW HI-FI MOCKUPS

Conclusion

What Have I Learned?

Travel RN is a personal project that I became very passionate about. Given my former experience in healthcare and background in the travel nursing sector, the project slowly began taking a form of its own -- from ideation to production of the MVP.

Looking forward to further enhancements and development of the product, I'd like to find out if other traveling healthcare professionals (i.e. therapists and medical coders) would benefit from such an application. From a marketing perspective, this would greatly enhance the product's image and branding in popularity with hopes of establishing a footprint within the healthcare industry as a viable resource where travel opportunities are concerned. In a business sense, the next challenge would then have to be identifying a possible way for the product to begin revenue.