Virginia Mason — Moonshine

UX Research Project

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Project Goals:

The main objective of this research project was to design a better system for implementing Moonshine at Virginia Mason (VM). From initial interviews with key stakeholders, we developed a research plan to help us answer our broader research questions:

• What are the barriers or challenges to implementation of Moonshine?

• How is Moonshine perceived or valued by staff members?

• How much of staff time and effort is devoted to Moonshine activities?

• What are some areas of opportunity or improvement?

Methodology:

Our plan consisted of contextual user interviews with VM staff who have some experience with Moonshine, a survey of VM staff involved with Moonshine, an ethnographic observation of a Moonshine ideation and prototyping workshop, and a focus group.

The focus of the user interviews was primarily to help us gain a deeper understanding of the attitudes, behaviors, and interactions of Moonshine participants. We set these goals as a way to deepen our understanding of production obstacles as well as perceptions and awareness of Moonshine in an effort to further comprehend opportunity spaces for improving the Moonshine program and increasing Moonshines's visibility.

We used a survey as a quick way to get feedback from a select group of VM staff. As mentioned, the survey was limited to a list of staff members provided. By keeping the survey short, and names/contact info optional, we were able to reach some staff members who may not be willing or otherwise have time to sit down for an interview or focus group. We also used the survey as a recruitment tool for a focus group.

Members of our team attended the first workshop of the year for an ethnographic observation. This event gave us an opportunity to observe how Moonshine is promoted and how workshops are run.

Findings:

From our interviews with employees who have been deeply involved in Moonshine we gleaned insight into what helped propel the most successful Moonshine products forward, as well as the program’s biggest hurdles. Our survey data confirmed the information from our interviews, along with our own beliefs or assumptions, and provided insight from employees who have participated in Moonshine less regularly than our interviewees.

We found that VM is in a very unique position as the only healthcare organization who uses Moonshine. While many current and past participants perceive Moonshine as beneficial to the company and its patients, many frustrations and roadblocks were expressed as well. These frustrations and roadblocks were echoed through all areas and methods of our research:

• 90% of people surveyed could only commit 1-2 hours to Moonshine every week.

• The current process is confusing and burdens the project initiator. The effort required to understand the submission and review process is more than an individual staff member can handle in a reasonable amount of time.

• Moonshine would benefit from having a dedicated person/people to act as project managers & follow each project from start to finish.

• No one is giving Moonshine their full attention. There isn’t enough dedicated time for staff to work through most of the process.

• Its to hard to get past initial development; from concept to finished product.

• There seems to be no direct visibility for Moonshine or it’s products. There's no way to tell if a product was created by or with Moonshine.

• Recruitment, it’s hard to get consistent participation and “content experts” are not always available.

• There is a lack of clarity around the process.

Given these identified roadblocks, our top takeaways are as follows:

• Moonshine needs to be rebranded to help spread awareness and wider adoption.

• Make the most out of everyone’s time during Moonshine sessions. 90% of people surveyed could only commit 1-2 hours to Moonshine every week—we doubt people will be granted more time to spend on Moonshine, therefore we need to make better use of the time they have.

• Define roles and assign some leadership. Point participants to different people able to provide guidance when they get stuck.

• The Moonshine Lab needs to be redesigned:
-Storage: the lab is mainly used as a storage space for projects that are in process or have been abandoned. How can this space be reorganized to be more useful?

-Climate control: being situated above the boiler room makes the space very warm

-Space: in its current layout, the room is too small for more than approximately 8 people to be in there at once, and the last session had 14 people in attendance. There was a room down the hall that they pulled extra chairs from that was large enough to seat 35+ people. Can workshops take place in there?

-Mobile cart: In their supply room they have a “mobile moonshine cart” that participants can use to work on projects. Unfortunately, this cart is not truly mobile in the most helpful sense as it is too big and cumbersome to be taken back to one’s office or desk. Can “Mobile Moonshine” be redesigned to be more compact and carryable?

• Moonshine would benefit from having a dedicated person/people to act as project managers and follow each project from start to finish. Especially given staff time constraints—not everyone can be a designer, and not everyone should be a designer. Staff should have access to a supportive and knowledgeable product designer to help bring ideas to life.

• The process needs to be redefined. The current process is very confusing and burdensome. The effort required to understand the submission and review process is more than an individual staff member can handle in a reasonable amount of time. Moonshine sessions, leadership roles, and project management are all severely impacted by this process.

To begin untangling Moonshine’s complicated process structure we chose to map VM’s current flow (the Moonshine Pathway) using our own visualization methods. Our working assumption was that we could internalize their process and identify all major obstacles from a top level view. Once this first process was mapped, we could begin visualizing the ideal flow.

Moonshine had two main documents that were used to guide project initiators from the initial concept point to construction and final product review. These two documents are the Moonshine Pathway and the Blueprint Template. The Blueprint Template is contained within the overarching umbrella of the Moonshine Pathway. Each document contains similar stages which have identical functions. This caused some overlaps and redundancies especially in the Project Initiation stage. Culminating in over 50 major steps with Idea Generation appearing about halfway through a combined process.

Through our research we believe that decreasing the visibility of all these stages and the ability to start ideating relatively soon within the process will help Project Initiators feel less overwhelmed, making them less likely to halt the process or approach it with hesitancy. Thus we redesigned the Moonshine Pathway to what we are currently calling the Shine Pathway as part of our overall goal to create a lean Onboarding Process.

Through creating the Shine Pathway and eliminating key redundancies our team was able to reduce the major steps from over 52 to 32, and the steps to ideation from 19 to 10, equaling a 39% and 48% reduction, respectively.

Recommendations:

From our research, we devised a set of design recommendations for a leaner prototyping process that reduced the steps from initial project pain point to final MVP implementation by 50%:

• Rebranding:
To increase visibility and shift attitudes about Moonshine towards a more positive perception we recommended promoting that the system has been changed by rebranding it to Shine. The goal of this new identity is to represent the services that Shine has to offer as a streamlined and collaborative department. This includes a redesign of the logo, brand colors, and department voice that would run across all digital and printed media.

• Process Pathway
With a clear understanding of the Moonshine Pathway as it currently exists, and a preliminary visualization of the improved Shine Pathway we believe it will increase efficiency and improve ease of use for participants, by further eliminating unnecessary steps and breaking down those necessary steps including a Sitemap and Wireframes

• Website
We envision the Shine website as the centerpiece of the Shine program; a comprehensive guide providing participants with all the resources necessary to effectively execute a Shine project.

• Mobile Kit & Guide Book
A kit and guidebook were developed as a method for teaching staff to go through the ideation and prototyping process. The kit provides the benefits of the workshops, on participants own schedule, at a convenient location of their choosing.

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Documents created:
Survey
Process Map
Journey Map
Site Map & Wire Frames
Brand Guidelines
Poster & Process Book
Full Report