Cyrencare

Mobile triage system redesign to support faster symptom reporting under stress.

Key insight

Symptom input breaks down in emergency contexts.
Patients struggled with open-ended text entry when experiencing pain, stress, and time pressure.

Design Response

Dual-input symptom reporting system

- Body diagram for visual symptom localization

- Structured lists for guided selection

- Designed to reduce cognitive load and hesitation

Validation

- 32 semi-structured interviews with ER patients

- Maze usability testing (n = 21)

(As is) Free-text symptom descriptions combined with lengthy checklists increased cognitive load during emergency symptom reporting.

(To be) Visual body maps combined with guided lists make symptom location selection faster and clearer.

Impact

25–33% reduction in symptom input time, with higher confidence reported during symptom entry

Reflection

User behavior under stress cannot be supported by a single interaction model.
This project reinforced the importance of grounding design decisions in real user constraints rather than assumptions.

Interaction heatmap comparing open-text input and body-map selection.