Her Company’s Vision
Partnering with employers, hospitals and individual practitioners, Teladoc Health designs software to make services more accessible for patients and more data-driven for providers. The platform provides virtual consultations across primary care, mental health and specialties from dermatology to nutrition, helps clinicians collaborate with peers, shares home health tests with doctors and more.
Donna Boyer, Teladoc’s chief product officer, says the industry had reached a watershed moment, with the health crisis intensifying the existing need to “lower the access barrier by making [care] more convenient.” Inundated with new users, Teladoc looked to Boyer to improve the platform and address audience needs.
Collaborating Remotely
“Great products come from the synthesis of deeply understanding user needs and then collaborating tightly with the diversity of skill sets that make up those product solutions. How do we ensure that we’re effectively taking a [design-based], human-centric approach?
[It’s] that shift from, we’re all collaborating in an office together to how do we operate as a team remotely? Being able to share and communicate effectively is the biggest challenge.”
HER TECH CHALLENGE
Embrace
New Tools
HER STRATEGY
“The use of chat really exploded, [and what] used to be in documents became unwieldy, so [we rolled out] collaboration sites. When you're together, it's easy to think: ‘I’ll just ask that person.’ [Now] we use [digital collaboration tools] to share information.
Road map [and] product development tools [enable us] to connect [many] people around the same systems. I never would've expected design reviews to be more effective online, but clickable prototypes [are closer to] experiencing the fidelity of the product.”
Translating Data Into Insights
“We have 12 million annual visits [and] 2 million weekly device readings that [help us] understand how we can drive better outcomes. We’ll gather [user data that] comes in from social [and] email. We have channels for employee and sales team feedback [and for] member support. [We collect feedback] from physicians on what’s possible and how we can make things easier.
How do you make sure that you’re taking advantage of that feedback to inform where you go next?”
Lean On
Experts
“We have an amazing data science team that [helps] us anonymously analyze how people navigate through our products [and] see patterns in behaviors. Then [we] can very quickly interview people and try to [understand]: How might we do something differently?
[A skilled technology team] enables us to synthesize [the feedback] and turn [it] into road maps.”
Delivering A Smooth User Experience
“Being centered on the member means that their physical care, their mental care, their daily engagement [must] all [be] in one place [for a holistic and convenient experience].
[There’s a product lead] working on diabetes, [one] working on mental health, [one] working on heart failure, [another] working on weight management. [Their work] cannot be independent because there are [patients] who experience all of [that] as part of their life. The challenge becomes: How do we offer those diverse products in a unified experience?”
Adopt A Connected Teamwork Mindset
“Teams that are working on those different pieces have to come together [so each product specialist knows what the other is doing] ... The more we experience and connect virtually, the better it helps us inform the experience that we want to give.”
Her Success Philosophy
User Empathy: Boyer studies analytics from millions of site visits and translates them into new design and engineering requirements. “Our job is to be really critical of [user] experience every day,” she says.
Diverse Ideas: Remote work provided a rich opportunity to hire talent from a variety of locations and backgrounds, creating a diversity of skills and experience. “You have to build the product to represent the population you serve.”
A Fresh Perspective: “Approach things with a beginner's mindset,” says Boyer.
HER 3 TECH CHALLENGES AND
HOW SHE TACKLES THEM