Amanda Schmutzler
Get Care
Helping members find every way to access care, inside a highly regulated clinical environment.
Introduction
Get Care helps members find every way to access care at Kaiser Permanente — from scheduling to urgent options — inside a highly regulated clinical environment where documentation had to meet ADA accessibility standards at every step.
Process
A full human-factors research cycle, grounded in real member needs at every step.
Empathize
Mapped member needs and frustrations across urgent, scheduled, and self-service care.
Define
Built persona boards and "how might we" prompts to reframe fragmented access as one flow.
Design
Sketched Find Care and appointment-scheduling concepts as wireframes, then high-fidelity screens.
Validate
Tested concept-exploration prototypes in usability sessions before locking final designs.
Hand off
Delivered final designs and ADA-compliant documentation to engineering.
Problems
- Members didn't have one clear place to see every way to access care
- Entry points for video visits, urgent care, and scheduling were fragmented
- Documentation had to meet ADA accessibility standards at every step
- Clinical stakeholders required rigorous review before anything shipped
Solutions
- Unified entry point: a single "Find Care" screen surfacing every access path — video visit, urgent care, scheduled visit, and e-visit.
- Empathy-mapped personas: grounded every decision in real member needs and behaviors, not assumptions.
- ADA-compliant documentation: built into the design system from day one, not bolted on after.
- Concept-validated prototypes: tested before final designs moved to engineering.
Research approach
The project ran through a full human-factors research cycle: empathy maps, persona boards, "how might we" ideation, and scenario mapping, validated with concept-exploration prototypes before final designs went to engineering.
Mapped member needs, frustrations, and context across urgent, scheduled, and self-service care scenarios.
Built persona boards and "how might we" prompts to reframe fragmented access as one connected flow.
Tested concept-exploration prototypes with real usability sessions before locking final designs.
Research findings
Synthesized insights from empathy mapping and persona work, distilled into the findings that shaped the design direction.
Available care options
These are the care options available for members today — spanning phone, video, in-person, and self-service paths to care.
Design sprint
Get Care design sprint follow-up →A week-long design sprint brought designers, researchers, and clinical stakeholders together in person to work through the problem as a group.
Deliverables
Interactive prototypes covering both the concept-exploration phase and the final, validated experience.
Early clickable prototype used to test and validate initial Get Care concept directions in usability sessions.
High-fidelity, validated prototype of the final Get Care experience handed off to engineering.
Redlined engineering specs marking exact spacing, styling, and copy for every screen, handed off directly to development.
