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Therapist Incubator Hub Website
Redesigning a website page for a therapy center's therapist incubator program to better connect with their audiences.
Client
Alliance Therapy Center, Pittsburgh PA
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Team
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Cody Soska
Henry Scavone
Lingyu Yan (me)
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Project Time
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07/2023 - 08/2023 (2.5 weeks)
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Overview
Background
Alliance Therapy Center (ATC) provides outpatient mental health and behavioral health therapy, as well as professional support for new therapists. All of the therapists are social workers who focus on providing equitable social care services. The founder and director of ATC, Heather Martin, wants to find ways to streamline their service delivery and expand the business.
My Role
I was responsible for analyzing research results, creating prototypes, and designing the website using Figma. Our team did not have strictly defined roles. Instead, everyone participated throughout the overall process and iterations.
Design Process
Challenge
Expand Business​
Need more therapists to offer more services to more clients without sacrificing quality
Efficient organization​
Time is the biggest constraint and need to schedule tasks more effectively
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Invest in Therapists​
Expand therapist amounts and support independent business learning
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Solution
A demo of the Therapist Incubator Project web service as an advertising and scheduling platform with information about the service offerings to attract more interested therapists.
Impact: Who Sees Value?
Alliance Therapy Center​
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Know the annual caseload of new therapists
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​Save communication cost
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More accessible built-in appointment system
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New Therapists​
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General questions answered
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Availability and process of supervision is visible
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​Increased career and personal life planning
Research & Idea Generation: Find pain points
General Research Methods
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Field Trip & Talk with ATC
The field trip helped us immerse ourselves in the environment where ATC's services operate. This hands-on experience gave us an initial glimpse into the operations and current business model. Through conversations with ATC staff, we gained invaluable insights from both business perspectives and clients' concerns.
Heather Martin
Founder & Director
She enjoys business practice and providing clinical supervision, but time is the biggest constraint if she wants to expand her business.
Mauri Tate
Therapist
Mauri is currently under supervision in the Therapists Incubator Project to learn how to work and run the business as an outpatient therapist.
Field trip
Braden Bernard
Therapist
Work is based on easy-to-use electronic tools at ATC. He prefers running his own business in the future and working with other therapists to see their growth.
Therapist Incubator Project
Services for Therapists at ATC
The project aims to help therapists expand their clinical knowledge and independence according to their values and future career goals.
Interview notes
Ideation Workshop
We used Crazy 8s to generate several distinct ideas within a short time to push beyond our ideas and thoughts. Then, we worked collaboratively to determine the best solution to solve client's needs. We decided to focus on the Therapists Incubator Project because it is one of the most iconic services offered by ATC. It aligns with the director's visions, ATC's business needs, and the goals of most therapists, thereby satisfying the needs of key stakeholders.
How the Incubator Project satisfies stakeholders' needs and business needs
Market Research
To identify opportunities for the incubator project, I did some analysis on therapists in Pittsburgh. The information was gathered from the interviews we conducted and secondary resources such as databases from Psychology Today, a website widely used by therapists for marketing purposes.
Key Findings
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Pittsburgh is harder to find partnerships with insurance companies compared to other cities such as New York City, making it challenging for therapists to start their own businesses.
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There are over 1000 therapists in Pittsburgh, but only about 2% of them have openings for clinical supervision.​
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However, almost none of them provide supervision services specifically targeting those who want to start their own therapy businesses, as ATC's incubator project does.
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The Therapist Incubator Project is competitive and valuable for new therapists.
Understanding Users
We then conducted more detailed 1:1 interviews.
Target user group: current project participants recruited by director Heather's referral and
the project manager Heather Martin
Objectives:
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Understand their experience with the incubator project
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Learn how they heard about this project at ATC
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Understand what the onboarding process was like
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“I heard that Alliance Therapy Center was hiring from Indeed. I interviewed with Heather and after she heard about my current dreams and goals, she introduced me to her Incubator Program."
Pain Points
​New therapists who are interested in the project
​Have a singular channel through which they access information, primarily relying on directly reaching out to the therapists at ATC.
​Heather, director of ATC and also the one who manage the Therapist Incubator Project
People need to initially reach out to Heather via email first to obtain adequate information about the project, but her time is limited and hard to manage all requests.
Problem Statement
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ATC's official website is one of their main advertising methods. The site has a page about the Therapist Incubator Project, but our research showed that many audiences failed to recognize that. Moreover, work at ATC is mostly technically organized, so we believed that digitalization would align well with their working style.
​How might we recreate a more engaging and intuitive platform with all of the service offerings of the Therapist Incubator Project to reduce communication overhead between therapists and ATC?
Ideation: Creating features & Prototyping
Current Website: Heuristic Evaluation & Expert Review
We conducted a heuristic evaluation and asked a service design expert to inspect and identify problems in the current interface. The task was to learn more about the Therapists Incubator Project as a new therapist interested in their career training or looking for supervision.
The Biggest Problems
Lack of Visibility​
The Incubator Project page is at the bottom of the website and only has one page without further information about the process
Wasting Time​
Therapists who are interested need to reach out to Heather via emails first - spend more time communicating
Expert's Question
What information should be included in our redesigned website?
Design Main Features
After evaluating the old web page, I ran a content audit to list all its features. Then, we worked together to decide which features were available, which ones to keep or remove, and what new things to add. Based on this analysis and interview feedback, we established basic design goals with proposed changes. This process helped us create the information architecture.
Change 1: Informational Sites​
Goal: A list of services and information on the web page address all the offerings and application process
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A standalone web service linked on the main ATC site
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Basic questions answered on the page
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Related resources (external links, learning resources, etc.)
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Application process & On-boarding process
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Change 2: Time-saving System
Goal: Save communication cost to reach out via email or phone calls
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Check current availability/opening positions
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An auto-scheduling built-in widget such as Google Form
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Change 3: Peer Review
Goal: Hear from other new therapists to better understand the experience
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Testimonials and feedback from the Incubator Project alums
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Information architecture based on analysis
At this point, our main goal was to present our idea for improving ATC's services. Therefore, we focused on the concept of building a web system specifically to manage the Therapy Incubator Project, rather than redesigning and launching the entire website. To better present our idea, we decided to create two main pages as an example.
Sketches & Wireframes
In our second round of iteration, we decided to introduce a new name to the Therapist Incubator Project web page — Incubator Hub. This name implies that this web service is an effective central platform for the project, containing all information about its service offerings. We believed that a good name directly related to the service offerings would be helpful in giving customers a clear first impression and increasing memorability. Having a well-chosen brand name can also contribute to advertising and marketing efforts.
Final Design
Web Design
In our final presentation, we showed up the two main screens as an example of our Incubator Hub idea.
About Page
Application Page
Quick Summary
Reflection
As a researcher, I also need to consider from the business perspective to note limitations and give actionable insights for optimization of business model and user experience.
Impact
We aims to provide a feasible change that maximizes value while minimizing costs, and our final design received positive feedback from ATC's director and therapists.
Next Step
If we had more time, we would build and test a real website to digitize everything as a platform for the incubator therapists and their supervisors to work together.
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