zocdoc brand case study

Improving perceptions, reinvigorating brands

When Zocdoc wanted to further establish itself as the leading consumer healthcare marketplace, it turned to Highwire to help garner the necessary media validation. 

After emerging from a strategic quiet phase during a multi-year business model transition, the company wanted to address outdated market perception among key audiences.

Highwire aimed to reinvigorate the brand and position it for long term success by reinstilling industry confidence and credibility in Zocdoc as a leader, and moving the needle on brand perception.

Highwire executed a three-fold outreach strategy, including proactive trend-jacking ; storytelling around the company’s successful business model transition; and strategically leveraging company news & insights.

Program results

Increase in total media mentions

Marketplace message pull-through

Increase in positive coverage sentiment

Moving the needle

As a result, Highwire successfully raised awareness among key business and customer (provider) audiences via earned coverage in top-tier publications and critical trade outlets such as CNBC,   Fortune , Politico , Fierce Healthcare , MedCity News, HIT News and more. This notably includes op-ed features by the CEO in Fast Company and STAT.

The team also increased credibility via infiltration of key industry podcasts, securing coverage in Bloomberg’s Tech Disruptors / Vanguards of Healthcare ; EY: Decoding Innovation Podcast ; MedCity Pivot Podcast and more.

Reaching the target audience

Zocdoc raised awareness among key business and customer (provider) audiences via earned coverage in top-tier publications and critical trade outlets, increased credibility via infiltration of key industry podcasts and built and strengthened reporter relationships across business, trade, and technology media.

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Zocdoc, a leading healthcare platform connecting patients with medical professionals, collaborated with Hudson Media to enhance its marketing efforts. This case study explores how Hudson Media's innovative strategies propelled Zocdoc's brand visibility, attracting a diverse audience seeking accessible and convenient healthcare solutions.

Challenges faced by Zocdoc

• Brand Perception: Zocdoc aimed to shift its brand perception from a traditional appointment scheduling platform to a comprehensive healthcare companion.
• Diverse Audience Reach: Zocdoc sought to reach a diverse audience, emphasizing accessibility for various healthcare needs.

Conducted in-depth keyword research to optimize Zocdoc's visibility in search engine results. Created informative blog content addressing common healthcare queries and promoting Zocdoc's features.This approach was heavily focused on content creation to drive organic and paid search ads.

Media Buying & Engagement

Data-Driven Ad Campaigns:

• Utilized data-driven advertising to target specific demographics interested in healthcare services.
• A/B tested ad creatives to optimize performance and maximize engagement.

Multi-Channel Engagement

• Deployed a multi-channel approach, spanning social media, email marketing, and partnerships with healthcare influencers.
• Utilized diverse content formats, including testimonials, animations, and informative videos.

Results and Impact

Brand Evolution:

• Zocdoc successfully evolved its brand image from a mere scheduling platform to an indispensable healthcare ally.

Diverse Audience Reach:

• Targeted campaigns resulted in increased sign-ups across demographics and healthcare specialties.

Positive User Feedback:

• Enhanced user experience and positive testimonials contributed to improved brand credibility.

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Zocdoc CEO: Patients value doctor choice in telehealth over convenience

The way Zocdoc CEO Oliver Kharraz, M.D., describes the explosion in telehealth demand that occurred in the days after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, a few key players were best positioned to deliver. 

Those brands that have been most successful, such as Teladoc, quickly took telehealth from a service that was hard to use to one that provided patients critical access to physician care during stay-at-home orders when the country really needed it, he told Fierce Healthcare in a recent interview. Patients could sign on to their computers and be connected with a doctor almost instantly. 

But as telehealth moves into a new phase where it has become a source of ongoing patient care, Kharraz said platforms that enable care online have to evolve to—or rather, return to—prioritizing strong patient-physician relationships. 

"Those really were never designed to support patient choice or patient continuity of online/offline care and so the ability to scale," he said. "I think taking this model that just instantly available to then scale it would be a mistake." 

Of course, Zocdoc has skin in this game. In April, the online medical appointment booking company added telehealth appointments to its platform in response to the spike in demand for virtual care. It now has more than 10,000 providers signed up to offer telehealth across 100 different specialties, Kharraz said. 

RELATED:  Zocdoc leadership move to dismiss co-founder's lawsuit, defend company's financial health

Here's a look at our conversation about what he argues the future of telehealth should look like:

Fierce Healthcare: What have you seen happen in telehealth this year?

Oliver Kharraz: I think everyone agrees that telehealth is part of that future healthcare system. If you were to ask anyone in 2019 around this time if they thought it would be as prominent as it is this year, they would've laughed us out of the room. But clearly what's been powerful for companies like Teladoc and other companies that really deserve praise in how they stepped in when the pandemic hit. They took it from a point where essentially telehealth was hard to use and it was mostly there to support acute needs, like to identify rash or "I need a prescription." It was really much more like an online urgent care experience.

FH: Why do you believe teleheath needs to change from that model?

OK: If you think about what it really is: randomized triage care. The patients go online, they wait in a queue and they get connected to the first doctor who happens to be available. For a patient … they've got very little choice. You're on a conveyor belt. As a result, the patient-doctor relationship—which is really the building block of our healthcare system—really morphs into something that's more like the relationship to an Uber driver. In its best case, it's polite, but it's transactional and ephemeral. That may work for cabs. But it's important to remember that healthcare is not the gig economy and that patients aren't getting a ride to the airport. They are putting their health in someone's hands, and they ought to have a say in who that somebody is.

FH: So what should it look like?

OK: If you look at how the healthcare system has been organized, it's always been premised on this idea that we should have an ongoing relationship with a local care provider, and the reason for that is that you don't want the information to be lost through handoffs. I remember back in the day when I did my residency, the theory was that handoffs are so bad that you want to push the residents to their maximum so we only did 30-hour shifts to make sure that we had the most longitudinal perspective on the patient we could possibly have. And it's interesting if you think about the impacts on the care. There's always something you can't document … Are they always a little bit grumpy or are they having depression right now? What are their reflexes and other things that are really hard to quantify, but doctors get to know their patients and sort of build a real longitudinal perspective of what that patient is like and they can view change as it happens and know what's important to double-click on in terms of the current state of the patient.

That's something that we just cannot and should not lose sight of as we design America's telehealth infrastructure.

FH: How does this play out when it comes to patient demand for telehealth?

OK: Zocdoc is a marketplace for patients to come and pick the type of care they want. We don't provide care. We don't try to sell doctors software or anything like that. We are essentially operating under the thought that the patients are better stewards of their own healthcare than anyone else such as a random doctor generator. Because we are neutral to what kind of care the patient ultimately picks, you have the privileged position to observe patient choices when we offer them different options. What we have been able to see in a first test is that we gave patients the option to go through a Teladoc-type experience where they would go to a queue and they would be seen by the first doctor available. They wouldn't necessarily have a lot of choice but it would be pretty immediate. And the other option was that the patient could select the doctor but the telehealth appointment would happen at a scheduled time, or when the doctor was available. We presented these two options side by side to patients to really understand: "Where is the preference? What is the thing the market should offer more of?" That was not a close call at all. What we saw was nine out of 10 patients who booked telehealth preferred to schedule with a provider of their choosing. Nine out of 10 will take the scheduled telehealth where they will probably have to wait over getting into a queue which might promise more immediate care. That was our first learning and points to patients wanting that ongoing patient/doctor relationship.

FH: So patients would prefer to wait if they can choose to return to the same doctor?

OK: Yes. The second question from there was: "Is that alone sufficient?" So is the option to see a doctor in person an important element of that? We presented patients side by side with doctors they could schedule with and choose where some of these doctors were close by and around the corner and some of the doctors were far away or only available through telehealth. Here too, we saw a very clear verdict: Seven out of 10 chose the nearby doctor when booking virtual visits. They weren't sure if they'd need a follow-up visit but they still wanted to be with a doctor who was close by because I think patients instinctively know that, at some point, they'll either want or need to be in the same room with their doctor. They need their mouth to be looked in. They need their heart to be listened to. They need their oxygen to be palpated. There's just no app for that. Many of these things are like pizza. There's no tele-pizza because the core event is being in the same room. At least, that's the way I like pizza.

What is clear from the patient's perspective is they don't want to be forced to choose between teleheath and an ongoing relationship with a provider they trust. I think they're right. They shouldn't have to.

FH: So you're saying Zocdoc's competitors aren't tapping into consumers' top priorities?

OK: It's clearly not what they choose when you give them both options. And I am neutral as I say that. I don't employ any of the doctors, and if patients were choosing immediacy of access over the specific doctor, we'd be happy to serve that upon the marketplace, too. It's just not what we're observing.

FH: Why, then, is there so much energy around the models of the big telehealth companies like the Teladocs and Amwells of the world right now?

OK: I think what happened was, in March and April, when there was barely an alternative to Teladoc and Amwell, as they got some early momentum. That's completely understandable and I think people made the right choice at the time versus not going to the doctor at all. But as they think about how to evolve the telehealth, doubling down on what worked in March and April will be a losing proposition because it's not in line with what consumers prefer. There's a whole set of companies that are enabling providers to sort of see their patients in their offices.

FH: How should healthcare investors be thinking about this?

OK: There's a whole set of tech companies that are enabling providers to see their patients in their office … there are many types of software that allow them to do that and, of course, EHRs will offer them. We also offer a completely free product for the digital enablement of practices they can use for telehealth. I think that's probably where a lot of this is going. I think the actual digital on-ramp will probably be commoditized. It will be a free product in the future. So it's a little like open-source software. You can't really make money with the software. You have to have services around that in the practice that you hopefully would get paid for. That is, if you were thinking of this from the investor angle, what the future is or closer to it than trying to have a centralized national care delivery network that is something patients reject. It's always very hard for them to use something they don't want when there are alternatives available.

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How Zocdoc Is Trying to Attract More Millennials With a Branding Makeover

Zocdoc, which recently raised $130 million in venture capital funding for a reported $1.8 billion valuation, got a makeover this week. a friendly logo and yellow hues could help attract young patients..

Zocdoc is the latest, but certainly not the only, tech startup to put on a minty new face. 

On Wednesday, the on-demand doctor bookings site announced a new logo and app design i n an attempt to shift its marketing focus to patients.  Zocdoc has ditched its previous logo (of two cartoon doctors). Its new, animated mascot is called "Zee" -- in the shape of the letter "Z," with two adaptable dots for eyes, plastered on a bright yellow background -- which the company hopes will come off as a warm image.

"I think the reasoning for this rebrand is really about bringing up our brand more in line with the company that we are today," says Richard Fine, Zocdoc's vice president of marketing. "When you think about the other large sets of health care companies, they have different stakeholders, whereas we only work for the benefit of the patient."

The makeover is also a response to the fact that about 50 percent of the company's business will come from mobile this year, Fine tells me. The new strategy also brings in "cleaner search" features, including a horizontal homepage bar, round provider headshots on search pages, and better markers for in-network and out-of-network providers. 

It's unsurprising that Zocdoc, with a fresh infusion of $130 million in venture capital, is spending a portion of that cash on fresh marketing--one that largely targets Millennial patients with meager funds, who would otherwise avoid seeing expensive health care providers. 

Consider that Millennial spending power is expected to exceed $1 trillion by 2020, according to a recent report from   Accenture . Back in December, leading up to the deadline for Americans to register for health care, President Obama had singled out Zocdoc and Oscar, another New York-based health technology startup, to help encourage more patients to adopt Obamacare. At the time, about half of those uninsured patients eligible for Obamacare were between the ages of 18 and 34, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

"If you think about the user we most appeal to, it's often younger employed, often female patients," Fine says. "As a company, we are absolutely looking at growth. It [the rebrand] is meant to help us attract and retain." 

Launched in 2007, Zocdoc has quickly grown to become one of the highest-valued tech startups in New York City. It now serves six million patients each month, or about 60 percent of the total U.S. population through its network of healthcare providers. In addition to booking appointments online, users can browse in-network doctors, find and leave reviews, and fill out paperwork online. Zocdoc, for its part, takes a $3,000 annual subscription fee from participating doctors up front.

The news of the rebrand comes just months after Zocdoc's original co-founder and CEO, Cyrus Massoumi, stepped down from the top role and appointed co-founder Oliver Kharraz as his replacement.

"In our next chapter, we will scale our business and accelerate our growth through new products, robust marketing efforts, and deeper enterprise partnerships with health systems," Kharraz said at the time.

Those infamously difficult-to-attract Millennials may not be Zocdoc's only obstacle to further growth. In recent years, competition in the on-demand bookings sector has increased, with the advent of startups like Amino Health and Better Doctor, as well as with the insurance companies rolling out similar features. At large, more than $11 billion was invested in health care technology in 2014, a figure that's likely to creep upward this year.

Kharraz doesn't seem too worried, though, largely because of the company's unique ability to aggregate health care plans, and because of the nascent status of the competition. "We are a place where people can search insurance and find in-network partners. That's something an insurance company could never do," he explains.

"It's not a thing that's easy to get off the ground," he adds, speaking of the business model. "If you look back in time, you see a wave of competitors come and go."

To be sure, Kharraz recalls that in the early stages of the company, a lack of both doctors and patients on the platform made for a less-than-ideal customer experience. (He used to personally visit patients with a bouquet of flowers -- plucked from New York City bodegas -- to apologize for late cancellations or other booking snafus.)

Today, with operations in more than 2,000 cities nationwide, that's a practice that Kharraz has thankfully retired. For the foreseeable future, he says he'll be working to expand Zocdoc's presence in less-cultivated markets, such as Cleveland.

"A lot of tech companies can come out of the gates blasting," he adds. "But there's no way to short-circuit these market-building dynamics that need to happen." 

It's worth pointing out that Zocdoc had allegedly landed on the wrong side of a   lawsuit back in 2014 , when a former employee cited gender discrimination, and an overall "frat house" culture within the company, as Business Insider   first reported. The new strategy may speak to a desire to start over fresh, though the company declined to comment on that point. 

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ZocDoc founder shares how to achieve a productive company culture

In the heart of the Meatpacking district, on the 6th floor of the swanky New York Soho House, I met with founder and CEO Cyrus Massoumi from  ZocDoc , a free to use marketplace that makes instantly booking an appointment online with a nearby health practitioner who accepts your insurance as easy as snapping your fingers. Today, more than 4 million patients use ZocDoc monthly and the company’s service covers 40% of the U.S population across 1,900 cities. The fact that ZocDoc has over $95 million in funding from some of the top startup investors such as  Jeff Bezos , founder of Amazon,  Khosla Ventures , Ron Conway ,  Marc Benioff ,  Goldman Sachs , and  Founders Fund , proves that they are truly disrupting the way in which people find and book health appointments.

Massoumi was able to overcome the two hardest things that are required to create a successful company: 1. Building something that people want to use, 2. Fundraising. Currently leading around 500 employees, Massoumi attributes most of ZocDoc’s success to the company culture he and his co-founders established from day one. A number of premier media sources like Crain’s and Fortune have named ZocDoc  The Best Place to Work  for multiple years. With unlimited vacation, open door policies and catered lunches everyday, it’s easy to see why the company would be nominated time and time again.

From Massoumi’s shared experiences, the ultimate takeaway was that culture  is  the foundation upon which creativity and innovation occurs. In his experience, here are four key points that foster a healthy and productive company culture:

Leading by example

The CEO of a company often single-handedly has the largest role in setting the tone for the office environment. Employees should be inspired by the CEO and motivated to work toward a common vision, and Massoumi has taken this to heart.

Massoumi is a firm believer that leading by example is the only way to manage a company. Rather than being blocked off in an executive office suite, he sits in an open cubical alongside ZocDoc’s employees and regularly sets aside time for office hours of which anyone in the company can take advantage. The company also provides a catered lunch to employees every day, and Massoumi purposefully eats lunch late to make sure there is enough food for everyone before he serves himself. This speaks to one of the company’s  seven core values  – Us Before Me. Put your team before yourself, and don’t ask others to do anything you wouldn’t do yourself.

Feeling of connectedness

Massoumi also operates with a mindset of company connectedness and inter-departmental collaboration, and the idea that at the end of the day, there is one mission that unites all of the company’s teams.

Putting this into practice, Massoumi holds a weekly company meeting with all employees to review company strategies, goals, and hear ideas from different voices in the startup. I asked Massoumi why on earth he would organize such a big event every week, and he restated the importance of ensuring that everyone understands and is aligned with the bigger picture and has a platform to “Speak Up” to ask questions, challenge the status quo or share ideas.

Giving employees freedom in and out of the office

Giving orders, micro-managing, and having strict working hours may not always be the best practice in enhancing company productivity, purpose, and passion.

As I learned about ZocDoc’s unlimited vacation, the biggest concern I naturally had was that people would take advantage of this. To the contrary, however, Massoumi reassured me that to his knowledge there has never been an incident of abuse. In fact, as he explained further, employees intrinsically feel a heightened sense of responsibility, ownership and ambition, rather than being obligated to do something.

Instituting an overall shared purpose

As referred to earlier, Massoumi and his co-founders lead by example with one of the goals being shared understanding and alignment of everyone towards a common vision. The single most important thing people want is to feel a part of something bigger than themselves and by taking the time to keep employees connected, it fosters a spirit of working as a team towards a shared goal.

In essence, establishing a healthy and productive company culture is at the heart of every successful company. Massoumi and his team have developed an award-winning culture at ZocDoc through leading by example, connecting the company, giving employees a sense of ownership, and creating an overall shared purpose for everybody to work toward.

A big mistake most early stage founders make is to focus solely on the product and sales before establishing a culture people want to work in. I too made that mistake, and luckily realized in time and in conversation with Massoumi how to change and build the foundation of a successful company.

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Bits | lessons from zocdoc, a health tech start-up that works, lessons from zocdoc, a health tech start-up that works.

ZocDoc says its Web site is attracting doctor-seeking browsers at the rate of 800,000 a month, a fourfold jump from a year ago. The service is free for patients; doctors pay $250 a month.

ZocDoc makes a couple of larger points — one about health care IT, and the other about Web start-ups in general.

First, at a time when so much of the attention in health IT is focused on the national campaign to adopt electronic patient records, backed by billions of dollars in federal subsidy payments, ZocDoc is a neat bottom-up success story.

Second, though the initial costs of starting a Web venture may be low, ZocDoc shows that building out a consumer Web service is costly. The company has raised $95 million.

The roster of investors is impressive. The early backers included Khosla Ventures; Marc Benioff, founder of Salesforce.com; and Bezos Expeditions, which manages the personal investments of Jeffrey Bezos, founder of Amazon. Later rounds of supporters included the Founders Fund and Ron Conway, a prominent Silicon Valley investor; and then DST Global and Goldman Sachs.

An online appointment-scheduling service seems straightforward. But the founders — Cyrus Massoumi, its chief executive, and Oliver Kharraz, both former McKinsey consultants, and Nick Ganju, the chief technology officer — see their efforts in larger terms.

“We’re one of the companies that can help fix the health care system,” said Dr. Kharraz, a physician and ZocDoc’s chief operating officer. “We’re making doctors more efficient and helping patients find the hidden supply of health care.” That hidden supply, he explained, is the 10 to 20 percent of appointments that are made and then canceled within a day or two of the appointment date.

At first, Mr. Massoumi recalled, many doctors were skeptical. Progress was initially slow, but things improved “once they saw a return on the monthly charge,” he said. Then, word-of-mouth endorsements by doctors became a powerful marketing tool.

Peer recommendations prompted Douglas Bailyn, a primary care doctor in Manhattan, to try ZocDoc in early 2010. The benefit, he explained, was evident last Thursday. Just before he came into his office, Dr. Bailyn noticed there were a couple of last-minute cancellations of afternoon appointments. By midday, he said, those openings had been filled.

“Having a medical practice is a business,” Dr. Bailyn said. “You need to fill your slots, and ZocDoc definitely increases the chances of filling slots.”

Demographics partly explain why ZocDoc has been so effective for doctors like him. The median age for his patients, he said, is in the mid-30s — a group accustomed to arranging their lives online. Some longtime patients use ZocDoc for the convenience, he said, but a typical case is “a 24-year-old with a sore throat.”

Patients are not selecting doctors blindly online. Patients are asked to rate their experience, and most do so with comments and one-to-five star ratings in three categories — overall recommendation, bedside manner and wait time. Dr. Bailyn, for example, has about 200 ZocDoc reveiws.

Investors have been impressed by the ZocDoc team and its strategy. David Weiden, a partner at Khosla Ventures, was a manager at Netscape when its co-founder James G. Clark forged off in 1996 to found Healtheon, a dot-com start-up with visions of transforming health care. It failed, Mr. Weiden said, partly because of its ambitious, ill-defined agenda.

By contrast, ZocDoc, Mr. Weiden said, was “focused and specific, and its strategy is to get a foothold in health care, gain credibility and go from there.”

Incidentally, the oddball name? Originally, the founders wanted doctors.com, but they learned that the domain name would cost more than $1 million. They got ZocDoc.com instead for $6 — and stuck with it.

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UX Case Study: Zocdoc Mobile App

By Sean McGowan

Have you heard the big news? Three of the biggest names in the business — Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JP Morgan, have announced a joint effort to form a new kind of healthcare company for their employees. Moreover, while few details have been revealed, the conglomerates have touted the venture as one that will focus on simplifying healthcare processes through tech.

For UX design and development companies, especially ones that often work in the healthcare sector like Codal , something like this perks ours ears up. So in honour of this almost inevitable disruption in the healthcare sector, we have decided to review another product that exists at the intersection of healthcare and tech – Zocdoc .

About Zocdoc

Zocdoc is an online medical care search and booking service that helps connect users to local physicians and specialists. The platform allows users to enter their personal and insurance information, and then serves up nearby caregivers that are verified, well-reviewed, and within the user’s insurance network.

Creating user experiences for healthcare applications is no easy task, especially for mobile devices. I have used the web instance of Zocdoc and been satisfied with the experience, but have not explored their mobile iteration. Does their experience translate? Were they able to cram a complex task — finding a doctor and scheduling an appointment — into the small screen, without sacrificing functionality or usability ? I downloaded the app for my iPhone 7 and found out.

Onboarding (Sort Of)

When I open the application, the first thing I receive is a pop-up that is requesting I accept notifications from Zocdoc. Regular readers will know about my pet peeve about untimely interruptions like this, but at least this pop-up provides some value by explaining what these notifications are for.

After accepting notifications, I am brought to Zocdoc’s default screen, the search tab. A quirky little page with a vibrant colour scheme, it is the first option in a series of five that make up the navigation bar, lining the bottom of the screen. Bizarrely, the last tab reads “Sign In / Join”.

This is a fascinating design choice. It is not the fact they are eschewing the onboarding process— that is a common strategy, especially for platforms where account creation involves an exhausting amount of data input (like, say, health care for instance). Instead, they have dedicated a tab on their navbar to sign-up / login.

My theory here is that because Zocdoc calls for so much information input on the users’ side (personal info, insurance info, availability), the app tries to break up the process as much as possible, rather than hit users with 5+ screens of form-filling and risk user fatigue.

I try exploring the other tabs first, most of which are designed to redirect me to the initial screen (the search feature), or to the account creation workflow. I will oblige, and revisit these tabs later.

Finding & Booking Doctors

I decide to attempt what is perhaps Zocdoc’s primary use case. So, I follow their suggested workflow and start looking for a physician before I create an account. Moreover, it is a good thing I do, because finding a doctor on Zocdoc turns out to be a laughably easy process.

With just four basic forms and all of them with default entries that likely fit a plurality of users, I was able to go from the home screen to a list of doctors in less than 30 seconds. I decided to skip entering my insurance, but I did click on the option anyway to find a photo scan feature—an excellent function to have, especially for users who may not be familiar with the specifics of their insurance plan.

After this effortless data input, the app delivers a feature-packed, robust list of physicians. Not only does this list offer ratings and locations, but also appointment availability, an extremely granular filter function, and a map feature.

Booking an appointment is incredibly easy. I can swipe for date availability and tap for time, and all that is left for me to do is create my account to sign in.

Appointments & Medical Team

I have now signed in to my personal account (some of the info is blocked for privacy), so we can see what the Appointments & Medical Team screens look like.

The appointments tab uses a basic card-based design and allows me to review my past appointments and rate them by several different criteria, including professionalism and wait time. The rating function is simple and straightforward and I can write a longer review if I so wish. I can also easily re-book appointments, and even share their contact info via iMessage, email, Facebook and more.

The Medical Team tab is nice but seems a bit unnecessary. It is mainly a roster of all of the doctors and specialists I see but does not really offer any new features that cannot be accessed in the appointments tab. I suppose it is a shorter route to rebooking and sharing, but I am not sure if that necessitates a tab dedicated to it, especially when navbar real estate is such a precious resource.

Final Verdict

Zocdoc’s mobile app’s best move is the segmentation of its onboarding process. Filling out medical forms is a nightmare. By deconstructing it into steps, and allowing the user to access most of the app’s content first, the process becomes much less tedious.

While the design is fundamentally card-based (with some notes of Google’s materialism aesthetic thrown in there), Zocdoc’s bright, quirky colour scheme and cheerful copy ease the hassle of scheduling your next doctor’s appointment.

As far as areas of improvement, the Medical Team tab is a bit superfluous and could be replaced with a more useful feature – possibly a WebMD like integration, or another educational tool so that patients can figure out what ailment they may have and what professional they should see about it.

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• UX Case Study : Bumble

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(Lead image: Depositphotos – affiliate link . All other photos in this article are screenshots taken during usage of the Zocdoc app.)

About Sean McGowan

Sean is a technical researcher & writer at Codal , authoring blog posts on topics ranging from UX design to the Internet of Things. Working alongside developers, designers, and marketers, Sean helps support the writing team to ensure Codal produces engaging web content of the highest quality. When not writing about the latest innovations in app design, Sean can be found cooking, watching old movies, or complaining about the shortcomings of his favorite Philadelphia sports teams.

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A charming new brand identity from Wolff Olins for Zocdoc — a tech-first healthcare company focused on patients. The brand has been given a more human, empathetic feel through the introduction of ‘Zee’ – a playful character developed from the ‘Z’ initial in the name. His ever-changing face subtly responds to situations in a human way and is reminiscent of the old smiley face pain charts used by doctors to help patients to convey how they feel.

Bikedot is a new company that builds, sells and curates bikes, parts, and clothing. They have 30 years of experience with many of the world’s leading bike builders. They also have partnerships with premium bike manufacturers. Their new brand identity by Studio Sutherland cleverly builds a brand language out of tire treads and abstract patterns of the word 'Bike'. I hope they actually manufactured bike tires with these bespoke prints as well! Very fun, fresh idea and brand for a bike company.

Campaign for Brother printers by New Zealand based Wave Agency .

The refreshing, matter of fact approach pairs perfectly with the job of a printer in our fast-moving, pushing for the 'next big thing' society. (Side note, these ads would be a hit here in San Francisco.)

The default art direction and type treatment, like the campaign, just works.

Sometimes it's all about going big with the idea. I love this giant hoarding by Mother for Ikea's new store on Oxford Street.

Brand identity and environmental work by Common Curiosity for The Tubeworks — a former tube and pipe manufacturing factory, now working spaces for businesses in Digbeth, Birmingham.

A bygone visual language of tubes provides a perfect metaphor for building connections and a 'T' shaped symbol.

This is elevated even further with wonderfully original three dimensional tube signage.

On first seeing the logo and the tap, I thought "that's lovely", along with the ® symbol placement – another very nice detail. On further reading I found out that the name is derived from the tap 'flipping' between delivering hot, cold, filtered, sparkling and boiling water. Then I loved it even more.

Visit Red Dot Studio's website here.

A lovely clock design by Brooklyn-based design studio Order and built by Lichen . Hand constructed with Baltic birch, each outward face of the cube is used for each face of a clock representing the four timezones of the US.

A 'compilation' of images by photographer Aidan McCarthy leading up to – and during – the referendum, documenting 'Englishness' in Cliffsend, Kent. Studio Sutherl&'s resulting design is a bold but beautifully sympathetic reflection of Aidan's work and process. The unbound nature allowed the images to be compiled in a different order each time, avoiding a prescriptive narrative (something Aidan wasn't keen on) but also resulting in each 'set' being entirely unique. Lovely details include Aidan's field notes as well as the extremely satisfying 'binding' technique of red elastic bands forming the St George's Cross.

Packaging design for Jam Packed Honey by Glasgow-based Studio Unbound.

The labels play on the clever observation of the jar form factor and transparency, creating a bee stripe system with just a few elements making for a beautiful, restrained design.

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Redesigning ZocDoc using Design Thinking Approach

Mar 26, 2021 7:12:25 PM

“A picture is worth a thousand words. An interface is worth a thousand pictures.” 

Design-led businesses swear by the principles and processes that have a human-centered core. Design thinking, which is a creative problem-solving approach enables businesses to focus on the people they are creating for. This, consequently, leads to better products, services, and internal processes.

At Daffodil, we use the design thinking approach in every stage of software development, right from research & strategy to building content. We think beyond transactions and create beautiful experiences that help businesses build lasting and significant relationships with customers. 

Recently, the product design & development team at Daffodil Software decided to work on a challenging exercise of its own accord. In order to showcase the strength of our design thinking approach, we chose to redesign a popular app; ZocDoc*. The aim was to level up the user experience while negating the pertaining drop-offs. 

Zocdoc is an online appointment booking portal that allows individuals to find a doctor and book an appointment, as early as 24 hours. Founded in the year 2007, this digital health marketplace monthly facilitates 6 million users to book an appointment with doctors in 2000+ cities across the United States. 

Also Read: How ZocDoc Works: Business Model and Revenue Streams

The Objective

The objective of this exercise was to: 

Redesign the existing website to decrease the booking time by eliminating the drop offs from the user journey.

Enhance the user experience with the right amount of minimal, clutter-free, and state-of-the-art design.

Create a user-friendly design that captivates its users. Also, it should improve the core with elements such as colors, typography, and design elements pivoting around it. 

Let us now walk through the design aspect of the exercise which aimed to redefine the meaning of consumer products and reimagined the experience that goes with it. 

Zocdoc is a product that uses information provided by the patient to make admissible recommendations for the selection of doctors, so the patient is more informed with taking decisions. 

The product is the very heart of a good design that builds great brands and experiences. To morph this thought into reality, the design needed to be clean, over an intuitive card-based layout to improve the user’s focus while relieving them of arbitrary experience they are used to with other appointment booking products. 

This redesign activity aimed to reduce the booking time for the patient. Eliminate the drop offs of the patient while they navigated within the app. Needless to say that the experience had to be astounding, aided by minimal, clean, and modern design with core design activities including color, typography, and design elements. 

Brand Colours  

The importance of color design originates from the significance of color to our human minds. The colors are tools to create certain emotions, express messages, generate ideas, and spark interest. 

Some of the colors carry universal significance, for example, red is a color for warning, and green means go. However, red and green when put together, most people would associate the combination with Christmas. Bright colors tend to set a happier and positive mood, whereas dark colors tend to project the opposite. The psychology of colors states- warm colors display excitement, creativity, and optimism whereas cool colors symbolize harmony, peace, and calmness. 

The task at hand was to refresh the user experience and visual design to consolidate all the features and build a foundation for the future. For this exercise, a total of 8 colors were used. These colors were used to redesign discovery and the reading experience for a user. 

Below is the color palette used for this exercise.

Typography is a form of art that involves the amalgamation of a typeface in numerous combinations of fonts, sizes, and spacing colluding to give a voice to the whole picture. We see it all around us, in a wide range of designs such as a brochure, websites, print, books and computer graphics, etc. depending on the skillful use of typography to create an impact on the reader. If you're interested in creating compelling flyers, you might want to explore a flyer creator for more creative possibilities.

Designers use typography to blend the text within the design, creating content with a purpose. A well-thought-out use of typography allows the designer to make a design look aesthetic and pleasing to the eye. 

In today’s competitive landscape, brands are finding avenues to create their distinctive identities. To convey the brand message the creative content must be able to grab the reader’s attention.  

The typography used in this exercise

Visual Design

Visual design is a technique to enhance a design’s/product’s aesthetic appeal and usability with a suitable set of images, typography, space, layout, and color. It is just not all about the aesthetics, but the elements which are carefully placed to create an interface that optimizes a reader’s experience and eventually drives conversion. 

The catch for us was to create a visually appealing system that would allow the Zocdoc to remain fresh and interesting every day. 

A readers’ first impression frequently forms in around 50 milliseconds. This fact reveals the intellectual level of emotional design, which also means the reader’s first impression of or the gut reaction to a design. This meant that we only had 50 milliseconds to prove to the patient they were on the right website. 

Existing homescreen of Zocdoc application

This is the redesigned end result of current system with modern, clean and minimalistic visual experience.

Many people are often mistaken that the design elements used are just to maximize the appeal. However, in reality, visual design is used to lead the reader’s eye to an item’s functionality and make the aesthetics consistent. We created a feasible facelift that included the existing features and functionalities of the website. Using the current design system as a starting point, we worked on the primary visual layer to create a delightful user experience. We composed and arranged the site’s content around each page’s purpose to give off the right visual cues. 

Existing doctor search result page

New doctor search result page with better usability and card layout helping patients to make quick decisions

Every smallest and subtlest detail affects what a reader thinks and feels. This was a criterion that led us to show the patients the right thing in the right way. Remember, the enemy here is the reader’s uncertainty. So we changed the primary color from yellow to a bluish shade of purple, as it is trending and goes very well with the healthcare industry. Yellow is not always pleasing for the reader and can strain their eyes. 

Therefore, the design we created helped the patients focus on the important aspects of the website and struck a balance between a fresh, powerful design and something they expect to see from a doctor booking site. 

Existing profile design of Zocdoc web application

New profile design with new layout and added feature so that user can easily access the necessary information in one view

Conclusion 

Visual design will depend on your product, its organization/industry, and its users, including their digital culture. A piece of knowledge I leave here with you today is that a major factor in designing is that you work to accommodate a reader’s limitation such as cognitive load. For example, the use of chunking help readers to understand and remember easily. 

Just like we did for ZocDoc if you too want your brand design to be revised by our product design team to understand the impact it can bring on your business, connect with us. You can share your business details and requirements by setting up a free consultation call with our product design experts. 

*Disclaimer : The intent of this post is to showcase the design expertise of Daffodil Software. We certify that ZocDoc or any of its associates is not our customer and this redesign has not been contracted by them. Our product design team revamped the application in its own accord. 

Written by Archna Oberoi

Content strategist by profession and blogger by passion, Archna is avid about updating herself with the freshest dose of technology and sharing them with the readers. Stay tuned here as she brings some trending stories from the tech-territory of mobile and web.

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