Product Design · UX/UI · Mobile Web · Healthcare
Concept project · NIA design challenge · 2026

Outpatient Visit Companion

Helping patients navigate public hospital visits with greater clarity.

A concept built around one question: “What do I need to do next?” It rests on secondary research and documented assumptions, and it hasn't been tested with patients yet.

Outpatient Visit Companion — scan screen, QR scanner and personalised welcome

Scan and start — QR code, scanner, personalised welcome

The challenge

Visiting a public hospital can mean many steps, from registration and waiting to consultation and follow-up instructions. Patients may be unsure where to go next, or how they'll know when their turn arrives.

The challenge: how might a clearer, more accessible experience help patients navigate an outpatient visit?

Discovery — narrowing the problem

Before designing anything, I built a research board. Its most important decision was to not redesign the whole hospital experience, and to focus on one specific moment instead: when patients feel uncertain about what to do next. That became the design question: how might we help patients understand their next step?

Research board: Making public hospital visits easier to navigate, with the challenge, context, assumptions, evidence and opportunities

Research board — click to view full size

What the research showed

01The setting is demanding. Outpatient visits involve several steps (registration, payment, consultation, pharmacy) in large, crowded facilities with unclear signage, long queues, and busy staff.
02Patients vary widely. Languages, literacy levels, age, and disability differ, and digital access is limited.
03Digital has to be optional. Not every patient has a smartphone or reliable internet, so the design couldn't depend on either.
04Evidence pointed the same way. Kenya's Ministry of Health, the WHO, research on wayfinding and patient experience, and W3C and WHO accessibility guidelines all pointed to clarity, plain language, visual cues, step-by-step guidance, and design for different abilities and levels of literacy.

I also wrote down my assumptions, such as that patients may not know the order of steps and may rely on staff for directions, and marked each as unvalidated, so they wouldn't pass for facts.

The concept

A QR-based outpatient companion that patients open directly from their registration booth, with no app to download. It guides them through their visit, highlights their next action, gives directions, and shows an alert when their turn is called.

The solution

01Scan and start. Patients scan a visit-specific QR code to open a personalised visit guide.
02Know what comes next. A journey overview shows the current stage, completed steps, and upcoming actions.
03Find the right destination. Clear instructions and visual directions lead patients to their next department or waiting area.
04Know when it's their turn. A prominent in-app notification shows the patient's name and destination when the hospital calls them.
05Complete the visit. Relevant next-step instructions and a clear endpoint for the temporary visit session.

Visit journey, next steps and directions screens

My visit — journey overview, next steps, directions

Name called notification, help and support settings, and after-consultation screens

Name called · Help and support · After your consultation

Designing for real-world needs

01Accessibility. Readable typography, plain language, and alternative guidance. Patients can pick a language (English, Kiswahili, Kamba, Kikuyu, Somali, Luo) and switch on larger text, high contrast, a voice assistant, or colour blind support.
02Privacy. Access is secure and specific to the visit, rather than putting personal information in the QR code.
03Low connectivity. Clear error states, a fallback for patients who can't scan (they can type in a visit code), and consideration for patients who can't use the digital experience at all.
04Human support. A visible route to hospital staff whenever a patient needs help.

Design outcome

A mobile-first concept that brings visit guidance, directions, and patient-call notifications into one focused experience. Rather than another general healthcare app, it holds to one question throughout the outpatient journey.

“What do I need to do next?”

What's next

The concept needs feedback from patients and hospital staff, usability testing, and validation of the proposed queue-system integration before its effectiveness can be established.

This is a concept design developed for the NIA design challenge using secondary research and documented assumptions. It has not been deployed in a hospital or validated through patient testing.