Mental Health App Development That Resonates: Your Guide to Healthcare Success

If you have an efficient booking app, it brings your business to the 21st century. Nowadays, a website reservation system or a mobile booking app is a must-have for most industries.

Let’s look at the statistics

• E-Travel industry grows by 7.5% every year. Accordingly to this fact, the researchers conclude that the market will reach $1.5B by 2023. In addition, the revenue share of sales channels of the global travel and tourism market will increase up to 72% by 2025. This includes only websites and applications for hotels and transportation. Other online scheduling software like appointment apps and scheduling websites are planned to see a similar boost.
• More than 80% of bookings are made via mobile applications if are talking about travel booking. Because of that, mobile apps are the first choice for people to book tickets and organize the trip.
• According to Statistic Brain Research Institute, every year people spend an average of $148 million on travel bookings online.

What is clear: this is a promising prospect for everyone that thinks about creation a booking website or app.

What are the benefits that can be delivered?

• Gathering information on the clients – with the growing number of clients that like the idea of using online scheduling software, you have collecting data for personalization. It is a great opportunity to come up with special offers and increase sales.
• Building the brand – booking is the first point of contact with your company and your chance to make a first good impression on the clients. If the service and online booking system are user-centricity and convenient in use, have high-quality standards and security, users will have positive feedbacks that increase the number of users and, consequently, promote your band.
• Multiple revenue streams – with an online booking system, you can multiply profits via additional monetization models, such as income from fees, commissions, subscriptions, affiliate programs, ads, etc.

The article demonstrates a detailed guide on how to make a booking app that walks you through all of the essential points.

8 practices for your online booking system

Go through the following list of features to focus on some important aspects regarding how to make a booking website and app successfully. Choosing features that are essential not just for you but also for your customers is the next stage of the production cycle.

Convenient navigation, searching and reservation

User doesn’t like to waste time and wants to make a reservation, so your app should be as intelligible as possible. For better convenience, your app can also include a geolocation option, various spelling options and enable searches by different categories and filters. Good advice to eliminate zero search results by adding suggestions on locations, dates, services etc. – depends on your business.

User’s personal profile

Account page provides access to reservation history and enables custom settings, like currency, language, etc. Because of that, user page is a great place for marketing – it allows you to collect statistics, send newsletters about upcoming events or special offers and many others. However, the user registration process is a pitfall for many businesses. Here’s why: it gives the first impression and users decide if they will stay or drop the app. Make this process as easy as possible and require users to fill out only the key information. It is a great idea of authorization via social networks, for examples Facebook and Instagram, and allows a user to register with only one click.

Multi-language & global currency support

These days, online payment is a required functionality on the booking app. Before considering how to make a booking app, think over payment methods to include. It must be a safe and convenient way to book rooms, tickets, services, tours directly through an application or website. So, the process must be fast, flexible, and transparent, so be sure to include all possible payment methods, such as PayPal, credit card, cash, and design a user-friendly one-page checkout system. A reservation system that offers a secure payment portal will exactly improve your business performance. Also, auto-detected language can increase the user experience.

Data security

During the booking process, app collects a lot of sensitive information like personal information (email, phone), payment information, etc. This data can become a source of immense possibilities for hackers. One thing is clear: invest in security!  

Auto-replies  

Currently, automatic emails are seen as additional and mainly useful tool for business owners in various fields. Email reminders, feedback requests or tips are just a few examples of how companies improve communication with clients using modern technologies.

In-app messenger

In-app messenger is an excellent feature for any booking app, whether it is a travel booking website or appointment scheduler. For the best results, you need to have a support team shooting responses or a pre-programmed chatbot to cover customer questions. By utilizing AI and machine learning technologies, it is possible to provide instant and qualified feedback. However, note that this functionality may take a considerable amount of time and cost to implement.

Push notifications

A well-thought-out notification system makes life easier for users. Check-in and check-out alerts, friendly reminders, or recommendations can increase the level of customer satisfaction. As well, you may include weather notifications, price discounts, and other relevant notifications.

Create a booking website

For making your app perfect and increase prospects for success, the experienced business owner might want to also create a booking website. Usually, a properly built website extends the functionality and offers clients possibilities like access to information on success stories, high-resolution images, reviews, etc. When considering whether to create a booking website, think of the benefits you can get:

1. Presentation of the brand
2. SEO and digital marketing practices for promotional strategies
3. Insight information about user behavior and broad data collection for company strategies
4. Wider audience outreach that provides increasing sales because of cross- and up-selling.
5. Collect customer base via browser searches

So, the idea to create a booking website makes a lot of sense. It is possible to build a web platform in the first product version along with iOS and Android apps. Alternatively, you can plan to launch the booking website in a subsequent version.

Generally, any app functionality, simple or advanced, should be in line with customer expectations.

Talking a little bit about app development

It’s important to discuss and figure out what tech stack of your app, based on your requirements. Tech Stack is the group of technologies used to build mobile or web applications. It is a combination of programming languages, UX/UI design, development environment, framework, utilities, servers, tools, and services used by the development team.

Before designing an application, it is important to think about scope of your project, time to deliver the market, security perspective and scalability. Depending on these factors, you need to choose the technology solution that has the potential to solve these problems.

Important backend development

Building a stronger back-end helps to enhance your front-end as most of the tasks in the front-end are fully dependent on the back-end. Here are some important back end tasks:

• API designing and documentation
• API implementation
• Building business logic
• Database retrieval and storage
• Defining permissions
• Creating test script
• Deployment

Keep your Front-end design simple and intuitive

Your front-end application must be clean and appealing. Here are some tips to build an amazing front-end application.

• Use professional graphics designing tools
• Keep the entire application design relevant and should match the concept.
• Ensure there are no typography errors
• Ensure relevant content should have the same design
• Focus on quality rather than quantity
• Try to match the original design and make the design pixel perfect
• Create an app landing page showcasing the value of your application and encouraging people to download it.

That’s it

The development of a booking system is a complicated process that requires multiple details. Forward-thinking brands have applied these strategies to their campaigns to deliver the best user experiences while achieving high brand promotion. Drop us a line, and we’ll be glad to discuss your idea.

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In the design and operation of digital products, it is essential to detect errors and ensure that these products fully comply with specifications (both generally accepted and defined by their owners). For example, in the field of healthcare, using such solutions directly impacts the health and life of patients and the level of efficiency of medical services. So, let’s delve into this topic. 

Objective of Quality Assurance in Healthcare App Development

So, let’s find out why QA is important. In general, it is one of the integral parts of software development, especially in the medical field. After all, in the field of medical services, the fate of the patient's life and health is decided every day. Digital solution that looks and operates as intended (of course, thanks to the quality assurance benefits) provides the ability to prevent all potential errors as efficiently as possible and ensures that applications meet modern medical standards. 

Regarding the importance of quality assurance in healthcare applications, the following points can be distinguished:

• Safety of patients: At the heart of QA in healthcare software development is patient safety. The timely testing of healthcare applications that could impact a patient's health is a critical aspect. This includes verifying medicine dosage, ensuring the accuracy of diagnostic algorithms, and the functionality of the patient monitoring system. Any malfunction, even for a brief period, can lead to serious errors, underscoring the importance of reliability assurance.
• Data privacy: The guarantee of absolute protection of patients' personal data from unauthorized access. Due to their specificity, medical applications regularly process a huge amount of information, so the introduction of modern encryption methods is critical.
• Compliance with regulatory requirements: A number of modern healthtech standards like HIPAA and GDPR are created for a reason. Therefore, absolutely all software should be developed to meet these requirements. Civilized countries actively implement official app development rules. If these laws are ignored, it is undoubtedly a direct path to legal accountability, with all the attendant consequences. The implementation of reliable digital solutions reduces the chances of getting a fine or a lawsuit until the loss of a license.
• Optimization of regular processes: The higher the efficiency of the application, the better the performance and accuracy of work within the medical professional team. In this way, medical staff can access the necessary information, thus minimizing the time spent on data processing. This guarantees both speed and high accuracy of decision-making regarding the further treatment of patients.

Risks Associated with Poor Software Quality in Healthcare

No one will argue that some medical institutions ignore the risks of using legacy software that doesn’t meet the modern healthtech regulations. However, this is a very serious and critical topic that can significantly impact patients' safety and lives and the effectiveness of daily processes.

Numerous errors, incorrect diagnoses, and, as a result, incorrectly prescribed treatment all directly threaten the patient's life and health. Also, do not exclude the occurrence of legal and reputational problems (fines or a prominent indicator of loss of confidence on the part of the public, both patients and employees of a particular medical institution). Unreliable digital solutions automatically complicates the interaction between employees. It leads to a decrease in the productivity of daily medical practice because it complicates the possibility of uninterrupted access to all necessary data and the exchange of information between departments and specialists.

Types of Testing in Healthcare Applications Development

There are different types of healthcare application testing, but the most common and popular among them are the following types:

• Performance testing: It includes analyzing the application's speed of action and navigation, taking into account different levels of load.‍
• Regression testing: It defines how much each of the module functions meets the requirements.‍
• Security testing: It implies checking the protection of each patient's data from illegal access by unauthorized users.‍
• Usability testing: This example of quality assurance in healthcare is designed to evaluate how user-friendly the application is, ensuring it is convenient for both healthcare industry employees and patients of all ages.

Healthcare app testing features are primarily critical, including the need for strict compliance with regulatory requirements and safety regulations.

The Future of Quality Assurance in Healthcare

Now, knowing the answer to the question: “What is quality assurance in healthcare?”, let’s talk about its future. Specifically, today, we can define three the most sustainable trends:

• Implementation of AI and ML-based solutions aimed at automating the testing process, independently identifying bugs, and preventing them in advance;
• Combination of DevOps and Agile, which ensures closer interaction between development and testing teams, ultimately reducing the number of bugs and speeding up their fixing;
• Using cloud-based testing platforms that provide scalability of QA healthcare scenarios without compromising the budget.

However, in the coming years we can expect something more revolutionary than the actualization of the above-mentioned directions since the healthtech sector is actively invested in by both governments and private institutions.

Conclusion

Now, you know the answer to the question: “What is quality assurance?” and can understand the role of QA in software testing – generally speaking, it is crucial regarding ensuring patient safety and the performance of the healthcare delivery process. Minimizing risks during the medical quality assurance process and creating reliable medical applications are possible only through the use of modern technologies and compliance with all official standards provided by a qualified service provider.

If you are working on a digital solution, one of its integral stages will be UX/UI design. While trivial projects usually have “beaten” paths for creating navigation and visuals, any deviation from the standard can lead to dissatisfaction among end users and increase the entry threshold for them. In this regard, no matter how sophisticated the logic of your project is, it is important to understand the usability principles maintained by human psychology to ensure its excellent user experience.

Theories of Perception in UX/UI Design

Generally speaking, there are several popular theories of perception in UX/UI design:

• Gestalt psychology aimed at gaining an understanding of how people associate individual objects with things that are meaningful to them. The main gestalt principles include figure-ground (according to which some objects, depending on their visual appeal, are perceived as key navigation elements, while others serve as background), similarity (according to which elements with identical visual characteristics are perceived as interconnected), proximity (according to which closely placed objects are also perceived as related to each other), and closure (which states that incomplete objects, if sufficiently detailed, can be perceived by users as complete).
• Affordance theory, claiming that to ensure intuitiveness, users should receive some cues from the interface from the very beginning on how to deal with a particular element – one way to do this is to use skeuomorphism;
• Hick's Law, which states that the time it takes a particular user to make a decision is logarithmic to the number of available options (which means that to maximize intuitiveness, the user's choice should always be limited);
• Fitts' Law, stating that the time it takes a user to reach a desired part of the interface depends on its size and distance (which means that to ensure a great user experience, you need to place interactive elements closer to the user's starting point);
• Signal Detection Theory, claiming that users can subconsciously distinguish between meaningful cues (calls to action) and background noise, meaning that they should be visually separated.

Cognitive Load: Its Effects on UI Design

Now let's move from theory to practice and consider individual insights extracted from the above theories of psychology in UX. 

In particular, the first insight is the minimization of cognitive load, that is, the efforts of the human brain that must be applied to perform a specific target action. Thus, the importance of reducing the amount of information or tasks provided to the user becomes clear – otherwise, there is a high probability that the user will begin to act erroneously. 

In practice, such brevity can be achieved by correctly grouping interrelated elements and removing elements whose functionality duplicates each other.

Emotional Response & UX Design

Another valuable insight from UX design and psychology is to establish an emotional connection with the end user through your interface. This is a global task that begins with user behavior analysis and identifying their desires, pain points, and intentions and ends with transforming the obtained information into design elements that resonate with them. 

Ultimately, you will have to walk in the shoes of the average consumer of your software solution to ensure the proper level of empathy with your emotional design. In terms of practical implementation of the emotional response, such user empathy can be achieved through the integration of “user experience stories” that can be presented by a service provider to users as they get acquainted with the digital solution, as well as the use of the right color palette, forms, audio, pop-ups, and text.

The Role of Memory in User Interaction

Since, according to cognitive psychology in design, the average person can concentrate on one object for up to 20-30 minutes, it is important to take this aspect into account if your software solution involves long-term interaction with it. 

Specifically, you can reduce the load on your users' memory by implementing elements and scenarios that work and occur in a way that is familiar to them. Otherwise, if something does not function as expected, it can lead to users’ confusion and erroneous actions. 

Understanding User Behavior Through Heuristics

Heuristics are specific UI design principles that can predict user psychology. Here are some of them:

• Visibility of system status, which implies the importance of informing end users about what is happening with your software solution at the moment through progress bars, loading animations, or status messages;
• Match between the system and the real world, which emphasizes the importance of correspondence between the system's behavior and the knowledge and experience that users received before they became familiar with your software solution;
• User control and freedom, which implies the need to provide end users with the ability to freely navigate your software solution and manage negative scenarios;
• Consistency and standards, which determine the significance of logical connections between elements, terminology, and layouts;
• Error prevention, which consists of preventing erroneous actions by end users by providing them with unambiguous and understandable instructions;
• Recognition over recall, which states that to ensure better intuitiveness, users should “recognize” familiar patterns from the real world in elements and scenarios of your interface.

Thus, you have to perform a heuristic evaluation to check whether your solution is good in terms of usability. Also, note that in reality, there are many more psychology UI design heuristics, but the above list will be sufficient for a basic understanding of what is meant by the term excellent user experience.

The Impact of Attention on User Experience

Many designers, in order to encourage the user to perform a particular action, abuse pop-up notifications and other features to attract attention, thereby increasing the cognitive load, the inadmissibility of which we have already discussed earlier. 

Instead, you can use such approaches as the correct building of a visual hierarchy, optimization of the color palette, breaking down complex processes into several simple ones, etc. And, of course, do not forget to appeal to the memory of users, which already contains some experience of interaction with other digital solutions and can automate some processes of dealing with them due to the familiarity of the mental models implemented.

User Motivation & Reward Systems in UX/UI Design

Finally, from the point of view of UX psychology, many UX/UI designs benefit from gamification, which motivates users to move toward the target action. In general, gamification is aimed at boosting user engagement and creating an exciting user experience that they don’t want to interrupt. Its main elements are rewards and recognition.

At the same time, it is crucial to note that some reward systems are too confusing for the average user and, thus, create unnecessary cognitive load instead of motivation. Moreover, gamification is not considered a universal approach that could be used in any project. Therefore, you have to always start with the appropriateness and the affordance of implementing this concept clearly and simply for the consumer.

Conclusion

We hope that with the help of this article, you were able to understand the importance of UX design psychology and how it is implemented in UI/UX principles like heuristics, emotional response, lowering cognitive load, user motivation, and others. If you are interested in creating a digital solution that fully meets all these psychological principles, feel free to contact us.