Clinic booking
Redesigning booking for a group of 14 physiotherapy clinics, online and at the front desk.
Role
Product designer
Team
1 designer, 3 engineers, clinic managers
Timeline
5 months
Platform
Web and front-desk tablet
Context
Fernway patients booked online or by phone. Front-desk staff kept a second calendar on paper because the system could not show who had already arrived.
Note 1
The paper calendar was the most honest research artifact I've ever been handed. I photographed a week of it.
Problem
One in five online bookings was later moved by phone, usually because patients picked the wrong appointment type.
Note 2
Patients didn't know the difference between an assessment and a follow-up, and nothing on the booking page explained it.
Decision
We asked one question first: is this your first visit for this problem? The answer picks the appointment type, and patients never see the internal names.
Note 3
One plain question replaced a menu of six appointment types. I tested the wording with 12 patients before anything else.
Outcome
Bookings moved by phone fell from 21% to 8%, and the front desk retired the paper calendar after six weeks.
Note 4
Getting rid of the paper calendar was what the front desk wanted most. The clinic manager emailed me the day it went.
What we cut
A patient account with saved history. It would have meant passwords for an older patient group and a privacy review we couldn't finish in time.
Note 5
Booking without an account means the clinics store less patient data, and nobody has asked for an account since.
Before and after
Note 6
The before has more options and helps less. Every extra option was something staff understood and patients didn't.
Results
8%
of bookings later moved by phone, down from 21%
6 weeks
until the paper calendar was retired
0
patient accounts needed to book
Lessons
Patients book the right appointment when the question uses their words. The internal appointment names now stay inside the system.
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