UX research for a rural telemedicine app on low-end phones

Gramin Sehat Link connects patients in villages with doctors by video and phone. A community health worker helps patients book and join calls. The app works well in the city office, but in the field only 41% of booked consultations happen. The team suspects the reasons: phones with 2 GB of RAM and almost full storage, patchy 3G, shared phones, low literacy in English, and data packs that people top up a few rupees or rand at a time. Nobody has asked the users.

The programme director wants research before redesign. She has asked for: - interviews with at least 6 people who live or work in low-connectivity areas and use basic Android phones, such as community health workers, patients or carers. They can be in your own village, your family's area, or a community you can reach safely by phone or in person; - a synthesis that explains why consultations fail, ranked by how often each cause comes up; - one or two personas and a step-by-step experience map of booking and joining a consultation, with pain points marked; - a low-data prototype of the booking flow, tested with at least 4 people on a real low-end phone, with the page weight of each screen kept under 200 KB.

You will not collect any health data. Interviews are about phone use and booking, not about anyone's illness. Get consent, keep names out of your notes and store recordings safely.

Done looks like a research plan with consent, 6 interview notes, an affinity map, personas, an experience map, design principles, a tested prototype and a short report the director can share with funders.