Here’s how i solved the problem

I conducted interviews with 4 people who have got braces/Invisalign before. 

Interestingly, all interviewees prefer online appointments. In Japan, it’s common to get first braces while working. These adult patients are busy to make phone calls on weekdays. Also they are scared of being asked unfamiliar questions on call because they have no ideas about orthodontics. 

I created a persona based on the user interview.  Japan has a unique culture that lots of people get their first braces after they start working. 

Problem Statement is “Mina Nakamura is hesitant to make a phone call to orthodontist because she is not familiar with braces and very busy for work.“

In order to prioritize information on the website, I ran an online survey among people who have visited orthodontic clinics before. I used MaxDiff Analysis to understand which information new patients are looking for. MaxDiff Analysis is an analytic approach used to gauge survey respondents’ preference score for different items. I asked respondents to pick the most and least important item when they choose an orthodontic.

Answers vary depending on person, but here are interesting  findings: 

• People don’t care about cost and insurance when they find orthodontics. Some of them mentioned that “Price may be correlated with their quality”.

• Reviews are important. They read reviews because they don’t know how to decide orthodontists. Some people mentioned that “I read reviews in order to understand what could be a complaint. I didn’t know that some orthodontists prefer extracting teeth vs others didn’t.”

I interviewed Dr. Ming Yu who is the owner of the clinic. He told me that how much competition has been increased recently. Other clinics have lots of new machines that his clinic doesn’t have. 

I did a competitor analysis to understand his clinic’s core value.

His values are: 

・Location (The clinic is located inside a big station)

・The knowledge and experience he has cultivated over many years

・Transparent price setting

These 3 core values align with our persona who is very busy for work (good location helps it) and hesitate to go to orthodontists due to her lack of knowledge (doctor’s knowledge and transparent price help it). 

Their original logo mixes Japanese characters and English.  I simplified the logo and created an icon so that they can use it for small spaces. 

Current website didn’t have a color palette and it was hard to emphasize important information and CTA.  I created a color palette with navy blue because they used it in their logo.  Their website used lots of different pink colors and I reduced the usage of pink because a monochromatic color scheme with blue brings more “cleanness” and “trustworthy”. I made a UI kit so that they can keep the consistent brand.