Patients frequently return to schedule with providers they already know.
However, the mobile scheduling experience treated every appointment as a new search — requiring patients to browse providers and navigate unnecessary steps.
I led discovery and design to identify high-impact changes that could reduce effort for patients while supporting Banner Health’s broader goal of increasing self-scheduling adoption.
From the patient perspective, self-scheduling care felt more complicated than it needed to be. In interviews, patients described the process as feeling like “more work than it should be,” especially during moments when they were already managing health-related stress.
From the business perspective, scheduling represents both a critical service and a key opportunity. Encouraging patients to self-schedule reduces reliance on call centers and helps streamline operations, but friction in the digital experience was pushing patients to phone-based scheduling.
The challenge was not to redesign scheduling, but to identify where existing patient data and established patterns could thoughtfully support continuity of care and reduce unnecessary decision-making.
Interviewed patients to understand how they approach finding and scheduling care.
Reviewed survey data from the Banner patient community to confirm patterns observed in interviews.
Mapped user flows and analyzed Jobs To Be Done to understand the opportunity landscape and identify where small changes could meaningfully reduce effort without redesigning the full experience.
Partnered with product and engineering to understand data, technical constraints, and clinical workflows — ensuring potential solutions were realistic to develop.
Sketched and iterated concepts to streamline the scheduling entry point and prioritize recently seen providers.
Worked closely with engineers to refine interactions, ensure alignment with the design system, and support a smooth release in the native mobile app.
The key decision was to reorder the scheduling entry point to match how patients actually think. Existing patients approach scheduling with a clear mental model: "I need an appointment for [person] with [provider]." The existing experience reversed this — leading with provider selection before establishing who the appointment was for.
Flipping the sequence to patient-first, then provider, reduced cognitive load and aligned the experience with established patient behavior.
In the 90 days following launch, appointments scheduled by returning patients increased 38% — reinforcing that prioritizing established providers aligns with how patients think about scheduling care.
Beyond launch, this work established a clear foundation for iteration. The next step is expanding the experience into the web app — extending the same principles of continuity, clarity, and reduced effort across platforms. This will allow Banner Health to offer a more consistent scheduling experience while continuing to support the broader goal of increasing digital self-scheduling adoption.