Since the pandemic, Australians have become well acquainted with telehealth consultations. What began as a public health necessity quickly proved to be a great opportunity, saving time and making consultations more accessible for people for whom travel is difficult.

Believe it or not, though, telehealth and online medical services pre-date the pandemic. Since 2018, InstantScripts has been Australia's leading online medical clinic, offering a range of services including online scripts and telehealth consultations anywhere in Australia, every day, from 6am to midnight. Having helped more than half a million Australians manage their health, InstantScripts grew to know their users well, and to understand the navigational challenges they encountered when interacting with the website.

InstantScripts came to us at Liquorice for help finding simple, strategic and elegant solutions to their users’ key challenges, and to improve the website’s information architecture, navigation, and design.

Like visiting a doctor, just online

Our overarching goal was to take the positive elements of visiting a doctor’s surgery (like the one-on-one guidance you get from a medical receptionist) and replicate that experience online as closely as possible. We wanted users to feel like they were engaging in a service more than simply browsing a page. Our key challenges were:

1. Improve primary navigation to help users find the most appropriate healthcare service faster.
2. Introduce a dynamic wayfinding device that gives users additional help finding the information they need.

Before considering potential design solutions, we conducted research to understand the industry, its users and their needs. We also looked at the existing site IA, user journeys and flows, and considered not only how best to structure the primary navigation and mega menu, but how best to structure the site in its entirety.
The existing InstantScripts digital presence included two separate sites; a marketing site and an application site, so another consideration was integrating the two in the most seamless way possible.

Finding more, finding it faster

We added two navigational elements to directly answer the most commonly asked questions: namely, What we treat and What we do. With these menus, users can do two things:

1. Search for their specific condition to see what relevant services are available. Finding your specific condition not only validates that InstantScripts is for you, but also quickly connects you to the most relevant services and information. Users also have the option to “View all” to see a complete list of conditions.
2. See a list of all the services on offer. An insight garnered from research indicated that many users simply didn’t understand the breadth of services InstantScripts could provide, so it was important to make the gamut of services more visible and easily navigated.

We improved the navigation and wayfinding for the Scripts, Telehealth, Medical certificates and About us pages. Each navigation item expands to offer three key links; firstly a broad overview of the category, a list of services associated with that item, and a link to login where you can access those services.

We also future-proofed the designs by ensuring that the drop down could house more or fewer links, so that any changes could be accommodated.

The questionnaire

In addition to the primary navigation, we also designed a questionnaire that gives users the ability to answer some simple questions and arrive at their destination quicker.

Giving people a second, more personalised way of finding information improves accessibility and builds trust and confidence in the service. Each step in the journey breaks down their needs into more specific steps and gives them the confidence to login and see their personal recommendations.

We agreed on 6 different user paths or journeys, each of them representing a key concern, and included a link on the homepage for quick access.

We designed a kit of UI components that would allow InstantScripts to add more questions, and to structure the questionnaire in a variety of ways, giving them the flexibility to refine each pathway once it's live and in use.

Simple isn’t easy

By utilising research, user-centred thinking and strategic design, we turned a complex, multi-faceted service into a simple, logical journey for users, making it easier and faster for them to find the care they need.

We kept the UI super simple, flexible and robust to ensure that it could be used as needed, instead of locking InstantScripts into specific design or navigation outcomes. We expanded on the brand’s colour palette, utilising more tints and shades from the styleguide to add depth to design and aid hierarchy and navigation.

And, as always, we ensured the designs were responsive to mobile and tablet. We designed for all breakpoints, and adapted the menu to tablet by prioritising the two key navigation items, and hiding the lower priority items in a hamburger menu. Lastly, we designed the login-in states to account for the varying levels of information, making sure that accounts with incomplete profiles looked as good as those with complete profiles.

After handing over all the assets to InstantScripts, their internal development team built and launched their new and improved navigation in late 2022, and you can see it right here.