My Doctor

Designing for trust in a booking app

My Doctor is an online doctor appointment service. Finding the right specialist and actually getting a confirmed appointment is confusing and unreliable for people aged 35 and over, so I ran the full process end to end: interviews, a survey, competitive analysis, personas, flows, a design system and the final UI. The hard problem was not the interface, it was trust.

Product: My Doctor, doctor booking app
Year: 2025
Industry: Healthcare, appointment booking
Role: End to end product designer, solo
Turnaround time: Two months
Tools: Figma
Platform: iOS mobile app

Mission statement and my role: My Doctor simplifies finding the right specialist and booking an appointment for users aged 35 and over, and I led the end-to-end design process as a solo designer, from research and synthesis through flows, wireframes, high fidelity UI and usability testing

Project goals and design process: help users aged 35 and over discover and compare specialists, improve trust signals, make booking reliable and fast, reduce booking failures, and deliver a clean UI that supports right-to-left content and accessibility, mapped across a five phase process of Discover, Define, Ideate, Design and Test

The redesigned My Doctor home screen shown on a phone, with the search bar, city selector, in-person and online consultation entry points and the most visited specialties

Interviews: six semi-structured remote interviews with people who had recently booked a specialist, the open questions used, and the key finding that booking reliability matters as much as usability because trust comes from dependable system feedback, not interface quality alone

Survey results: an exploratory questionnaire of seventeen questions completed by seventeen participants, charted by gender, age range, how people find a specialist, problems experienced with online booking, and whether they already knew the doctor before booking

Affinity diagram clustering raw interview data into themes: trust in online information, uncertainty after booking, difficulty comparing doctors and lack of support in urgent situations, each with the challenges and the user needs behind it

User persona: Maryam, 41, a homemaker in Tehran who manages medical appointments for her whole family, compares doctors on reviews, availability, insurance and location, and needs strong reassurance before confirming a booking

MVP scope: doctor profiles, search and filters, online and in-person booking, verified reviews, user and family management, and booking confirmation and notifications, prioritised by their impact on trust and booking reliability

The search results screen shown on a phone, listing doctors with their specialty, city, first free slot, rating and separate buttons for an in-person or an online appointment

Low fidelity wireframes for the main screens, used to validate flows, content placement and functional priorities before visual design

Style guide: the Yekan type scale from Heading 1 at 40px down to a 12px caption, plus the four column grid with 16px margins and 20px gutters

Colour palette and components: the primary blue 0373FF, secondary teal 46C8AF and neutral 1E1C1C, shown with the doctor cards, filter controls and bottom navigation built from them

Visual design, home page: the search bar for vague needs such as a symptom rather than a doctor name, in-person booking, online consultation, fast and emergency visit, most visited specialties, and the bottom navigation, each annotated with the research reason behind it

Visual design, search page: the search box for doctor name, specialty or condition, frequently searched specialties and conditions to reduce typing, and the results list

Visual design, appointment booking and sign-up: selecting visit type, date and time, then signing in or creating an account to complete the booking and receive confirmation and reminders

Before and after on two key screens, search results and booking: same layout, only the colours changed, from 37 of 37 and 41 of 42 text layers below 4.5 to 1 down to none

Touch targets and text size: red boxes mark tap areas smaller than 44 pt or 48 dp, with a table of each element as designed and its fix, such as appointment time slots going from 64 by 24 to 64 by 44, and 86 small text layers moved up to 12 px

Usability test: a moderated test with four people aged 37 to 68 on their own phones, with four tasks. Four of four found a cardiologist and reached the booking step, three of four were unsure which time of day was selected, three of four wanted a map and missed the Directions link, and one of four opened booking by mistake. A participant aged 68 said she found the address but could not see a map or directions button

Read this case study as text

Mission

My Doctor set out to simplify the confusing and frustrating process of finding the right specialist and booking an appointment, for users aged 35 and over. The platform aims to deliver a trustworthy, clear and hassle-free experience: reliable information, less uncertainty, and the confidence that a medical visit is actually booked.

My role

I led the end-to-end product design process as a solo designer: user research, synthesis, defining the core flows, wireframes, high fidelity interfaces, and validating the experience through usability testing.

Project goals

Help users aged 35 and over confidently discover and compare specialist doctors.
Reduce uncertainty by improving trust signals: verified information, real reviews, clinic details.
Create a booking flow that is reliable, fast and frustration-free.
Minimise booking failures and mismatches through clearer confirmation and real-time availability.
Deliver a clean, intuitive UI that supports right-to-left content and accessibility needs.

Research

Interviews. I ran six semi-structured remote interviews with people who had recently booked a specialist and were familiar with digital services, focused on real booking experiences and how they decide. Participants consistently relied on reviews and recommendations as their primary trust signal, and many described online bookings that were never registered at the clinic, which had trained them to confirm by phone afterwards. The conclusion: booking reliability is as critical as usability. Trust is not built through interface quality alone, but through transparent information and dependable system feedback.

Survey. An exploratory questionnaire of seventeen questions, completed by seventeen participants, covering how people find a specialist, what problems they have hit with online booking, and whether they knew the doctor before booking.

Competitive analysis. I reviewed five existing booking platforms, Snapp Doctor, Paziresh24, DoctorTo, Dr. Saina and Dr. Dr, comparing booking patterns, trust signals and usability gaps across doctor comparison, profile information, reviews, exact available times, advanced filtering, online consultation and map accuracy.

Synthesis

An affinity diagram clustered the raw interview data into four themes: trust in online information, uncertainty after booking, difficulty comparing doctors, and lack of support in urgent situations. Each cluster was paired with the underlying user need, which is what the MVP was later prioritised against.

The persona, Maryam, 41, a homemaker in Tehran, manages medical appointments for her whole family. She compares doctors on reviews, availability, insurance and location, and after past experiences with unregistered appointments she needs strong reassurance before she confirms.

MVP scope

Features were prioritised by their impact on trust, booking reliability and the core needs found in research: doctor profiles with a licence number and a short intro video, search and filters, real-time in-person and online booking with cancellation and reminders, reviews that only users who booked through the app can leave, family management for booking on behalf of parents and children, and explicit booking status from requested to confirmed. Growth, monetisation and advanced scenarios were deferred to later phases.

User flow

The user flow is built around one primary path: discover a doctor, review their profile, book with confidence. It covers both entry points, users who already know the doctor and users who do not, through search, filtering, comparison, slot selection, account creation, payment, receipt and the confirmation notification.

Design system

The style guide covers the Yekan type scale, from a 40px bold Heading 1 down to a 12px caption, on a four column grid with 16px margins and 20px gutters. The palette is a primary blue (0373FF), a secondary teal (46C8AF) and a neutral near-black (1E1C1C), applied to doctor cards, filter controls and the bottom navigation.

The interface

The final screens cover home, search, the doctor profile and the booking and sign-up flow. Two decisions come directly from research: the home search accepts a vague need such as a symptom rather than a doctor name, because that is how people actually start; and the fast and emergency visit section prioritises availability over preference, because the sharpest frustration in the interviews was finding nothing available when it was urgent.

Usability test

I ran a moderated test with 4 people aged 37 to 68, on their own phones, using a clickable Figma prototype. The tasks: find a cardiologist in your city, choose a doctor you trust and open the profile, find how to get to the clinic, and book an in-clinic visit for Monday morning. All 4 found a cardiologist and reached the booking step. 3 of 4 were unsure which time of day was selected, 3 of 4 wanted a map or route and missed the Directions link, and 1 of 4 opened booking by mistake when she only wanted to see the doctor. As one participant, 68, put it: “I found the address and it says Shariati metro, but I don’t see a map or directions button.”

What I changed: the selected time of day is now a solid blue tab, and a summary box confirms visit type, day and time before Continue. The small Directions text link is now a clear button with a map icon, with space above it. View profile is now a clearer button, aligned with the doctor’s name.

Accessibility review

Many of my users are 35 and over, so in September 2026 I went back to the final screens and audited them against WCAG 2.1 AA and the Apple and Material touch-target guidelines. Across 11 screens I found 9 text colour pairs below 4.5:1, 3 border colours below 3:1, 86 text layers at 9.5 to 10 px (below my own 12 px caption) and 8 tap targets smaller than 44 pt.

Every text layer was measured against its real background with a Figma script (AI-assisted) using the WCAG 2.1 contrast formula; buttons, chips, borders and inputs were checked for 3:1 non-text contrast; and every tappable element was measured in the 412 px design frame against Apple 44 x 44 pt and Material 48 x 48 dp. I built an accessible colour palette that keeps the brand blue (0373FF became 026CEF), re-tested the key screens, and every non-logo text layer now passes 4.5:1. Small tap targets such as time slots, profile tabs and icons now have 44 pt tap areas, and small text moved up to 12 px.

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