Overlake’s Improved Search Implementation (User Research)

Overlake Medical Center & Clinics is a nonprofit medical center located on the Eastside of the Puget Sound region employing nearly 3,000 people.

Established over 60 years ago, Overlake is known for its excellence in quality of care as well as its advanced and award-winning medical services. With an extensive website consisting of 4000+ pages listing providers, locations, services, classes, events, and more, a robust and accessible search was needed to improve the patient and visitor experience for finding information.

User Research

Key Stakeholders

After exploring all the possible groups who may be involved or impacted by the Overlake site, we identified six key stakeholders, with Patients being the focus for the search algorithm:

• Patients
• Career Seekers
• Overlake Employees
• Community Outreach (e.g. class attendees)
• Medical Community (e.g. other providers referring patients to specialists)
• External Stakeholders (e.g. donors or volunteers)

Personas

The priority three target users overall were potential patients, donors, and employees.

App Designs

Mostly designed by another designer prior to me joining

Challenges

Algorithmic Weighting

• “How can I schedule an appointment with my doctor?”
• “Are they trustworthy/experienced?”
• “Is there a doctor near me?”

Relevance Tuning

• “What services are available?”
• “How do I spell…?”
• “Is this doctor right for me?”

Solution

Algorithm Weighting

While testing internally, one of the biggest challenges was fine-tuning the algorithm weighting. After analyzing heatmaps and recordings (as well as factoring in personas), the following order was determined:

1. Exact name match
2. Specialty (Employed Physicians, Nurses, PAs, then Affiliates, Physical Therapists, Hospitalists)
3. Text on Profile
4. Proximity (i.e. location typed in, e.g. “Bellevue Cardiologist”)

Relevance Tuning

To account for misspellings and variation in terminology, extensive market research and deep-diving into terminology was done with the Communications team. Synonym configuration was enabled for clinical terminology and laymen term equivalents, e.g. “nephrology” and “kidneys” or “pulmonology” and “lung”, as well as variations in terminology, e.g. “Obstetrics & Gynecology” vs. “ob/gyn” vs. “ob gyn.”

Result

The new search implementation deployed July 1, 2022.

It was exciting to see actual patients and site visitors use the new search functionality based on the team’s fine-tuning of the algorithm weighting and synonyms for search terms. The insight gathered helped Overlake know which programs and services to promote as well as better understand what users are actually seeking and implement A/B testing down the line.