Accessibility UX - UX Research - Interaction Design
A mobile healthcare experience connecting accessible appointment booking, sign-language translation, and visual follow-up care.
Overview
Hospital visits depend on rapid spoken exchanges: patients describe symptoms, staff give directions, doctors explain diagnoses, and pharmacies confirm treatment. Deaf patients are often expected to bridge each gap themselves.
Deaf Connect reframes accessibility as a complete care journey rather than a single translation feature, supporting the patient before, during, and after the appointment.
I combined background research, a questionnaire, and three stakeholder interviews to map where communication breaks down across the hospital experience.
I translated the findings into a service blueprint, a custom visual language, low-fidelity flows, and a high-fidelity mobile prototype centered on sign and text conversion.
Problem
A missed symptom, unclear direction, or misunderstood prescription is not a minor inconvenience. Each communication failure can reduce independence, increase anxiety, and affect the quality of care.
Symptoms, diagnoses, and treatment details can be incomplete when reliable interpretation is unavailable.
Audio announcements and spoken directions make registration and finding departments harder to complete independently.
Repeatedly asking for help can heighten anxiety, embarrassment, and distrust before care even begins.
Research
The research traced accessibility across the full visit, then compared where patients had to ask, explain, or confirm information without dependable support.
01 / Critical handoff
The most frequently named barrier appeared during the highest-stakes conversation: explaining symptoms and understanding medical guidance.
Wayfinding created friction before the appointment even began.
Support reached some respondents, but it was not a dependable part of every visit.
The source board combines background research, survey findings, and stakeholder evidence used to frame the design opportunity.
Interview
Three perspectives clarified what accessible communication must support in practice.
Uses sign language and writing, but cannot reliably explain symptoms or understand spoken medical instructions.
“Respect our communication methods instead of treating us differently.”
Sees a need for clearer visual health education and tools that help people manage care independently.
“Understanding should begin before a patient has to ask for help.”
Needs dependable tools for collecting symptoms, explaining procedures, and confirming patient understanding.
“Hospitals need a clear channel designed around sign-language access.”
Persona
The persona combines the recurring needs described by the patient interview and questionnaire responses.
Uses sign language first and writing as a fallback. Prepares questions before appointments and relies on visual confirmation.
Spoken instructions, medical terminology, and changing hospital locations make each handoff uncertain.
One private, dependable way to book care, communicate symptoms, understand decisions, and retain treatment information.
Pain Points
Patients cannot fully express symptoms or verify that medical information was understood correctly.
Limited staff awareness can turn a communication difference into anxiety, embarrassment, or reduced trust.
Accessibility services are fragmented, inconsistent, and often discovered only after a problem occurs.
Journey Map
Insight
Patients need the same information to travel with them from booking to registration, consultation, diagnosis, prescription, and follow-up. Accessibility must preserve continuity, not just convert one sentence.
The Root Cause
When interpretation, visual guidance, and accessible records are treated as optional services, the patient becomes responsible for repairing the system during the most stressful moments of care.
Design Goal
Deaf Connect should help patients prepare before arrival, communicate accurately during care, and keep accessible instructions afterward without depending on a different workaround at every step.
Book a doctor, record communication needs, and preview the visit.
Receive visual directions, appointment status, and staff assistance.
Convert sign language and written text during the consultation.
Review diagnosis, prescriptions, and follow-up care visually.
Service Blueprint
Understand where communication barriers appear across the full medical journey, from appointment booking to post-treatment care.
Generate medical needs / Guidance consultation / Choose time and doctor
Help patients identify the correct department and doctor. Provide accessible appointment information.
Verify appointment requests and doctor availability.
Registration / See doctor / Communicate symptoms and needs
Show visit information, doctor details, visit time and location. Provide text and visual communication support.
Store patient information and support real-time chat, video calls and motion translation.
Doctor diagnosis / Understand medical advice
Provide gesture recognition, visual feedback and text notifications. Give access to diagnosis records and long-term treatment guidance.
Support communication between deaf patients and medical staff through sign-language and text systems.
Follow treatment plan / Cooperate with medical procedures
Use visual charts and animations to explain diagnoses and treatment plans.
Manage hospital and patient data. Support remote diagnosis and video consultation.
Receive information / Sign consent forms / Understand reports and materials
Present medical materials, lab results and reports in accessible visual formats.
Convert sign language into text through real-time recognition and connect the system with hospital data.
System Support
Store and manage patient and appointment information.
Support hospital systems, devices and network operations.
Handle business logic and data processing.
User authentication and medical data encryption.
Gesture recognition, text notifications and visual communication.
Prototype
Low-fidelity screens established the appointment, consultation, and follow-up sequence. The final interface then clarified hierarchy, translation states, and confirmation moments.
Final Solution
01 - Appointment & Guidance
Patients select a doctor and time, record communication preferences, receive confirmation, and enter an accessible hospital mode with visual guidance.
02 - Live Consultation
Sign-language recognition converts patient input into text, while provider responses can be displayed as readable text and visual sign-language guidance.
03 - Follow-up Care
Patients can review the diagnosis, treatment guidance, and prescription information, then return through video consultation with the same translation support.
Impact & Takeaways
The final concept reduces the number of moments when patients must improvise communication and gives providers a clearer way to confirm that critical medical information was understood.
Improvement recorded during prototype evaluation of the medical journey.
Appointment, consultation, and follow-up combined into one accessible experience.
Sign-to-text and text-to-sign communication supported in the same consultation flow.
Patient Independence
Patients can communicate needs before arrival and retain visual information after the visit, reducing repeated explanations.
Provider Confidence
Translation states and persistent records help providers verify meaning instead of assuming a spoken exchange was understood.
Reflection
What I Learned
The most important shift was moving beyond a translator screen. Booking, wayfinding, medical explanation, and follow-up all had to preserve the same accessible context.
Future Improvement
The next phase should include Deaf participants, interpreters, and clinical staff to test regional sign variation, correction flows, sensitive-data handling, and emergency use.
