Online Emergency Department Check-in Mishap

Earlier this evening, my partner’s car was hit by a guy running a red light. He sustained a concussion and wanted to go to the hospital. Here is dashcam video of the accident.

After calling insurance to find out which hospital he could visit (turns out, not the closest one!), I looked it up online to verify the address. On that page, I saw that the emergency department offered online check-in so that you can wait at home.

screen shot of the Seton ER hospital home page with a form to locate a hospital
Screenshot: Seton ER home page

Being in a hurry since this was an emergency, I was scanning the page quickly. Only two things caught my eye:

  1. The headline that reads “Mini Emergency?” at which point,
  2. I scrolled down, saw the location I wanted, and clicked “Go”

What I did not notice was the most important information on the page—the statement about what conditions not to use online check-in for:

If you are experiencing a life-threatening emergency, go directly to the ER or dial 9‑1‑1. Signs or symptoms of an acute emergency may include…head injury or other major trauma…

Design Recommendations

  1. Move the when-not-to-use-this information to be in context with the page’s main heading
  2. Make the small, gray font with poor contrast easier to read
  3. Transform the long, boring block with a bullet list
  4. Reduce the branding that takes up valuable real estate and obfuscates important information
  5. Under the covers, fix the order of headings
screenshot of design changes to the Seton ER homepage with important information highlighted
Screenshot: Updated Seton ER homepage

In the bathroom, I saw this great example of people making their own user experiences better. The lock was installed backwards.

Photo of a bathroom door lock where the lock is reversed so someone drew locked and unlocked icons on the door
Lock on the ER bathroom door

Bowling!

I went bowling for the first time in a long, long time last night with some friends. I expected to see the typical scoring screen.

photo of a bowling screen with 10 frames
Tired old bowling courtesy of sunnythomas

On the screens above each lane, I could see a similarly detailed scoring outline for each player. But what I saw on a smaller screen next to the lane, very much in the eye line of players, was a simple bar chart showing player progress.

photo of a bowling scoring screen that shows a bar chart of who is winning
Updated bowling screen with bar chart

What a great idea because most folks probably don’t care if they cleared a 7/10 split or how many spares versus strikes they’ve thrown. They just want to know who’s winning and what their score right now is. Super impressed by this.

Lights Out!

Just a quick post today, folks.

The city power company mailed us a fridge magnet with the phone number to call in the event of a power outage. If the lights have been on for awhile, and then go out—presumably because of a power outage—the magnet glows in the dark. Whoever thought of that is awesome.

side by side picture of a fridge magnet that glows in the dark
Glow-in-the-dark fridge magnet

The only room for improvement I could see is having just the power outage number glow, and not the customer service number. Since both numbers are the same size and the text explaining what each is for is very small, this could be confusing in the dark. Otherwise, good job.