Three ways to spend a wait

The people I interviewed waited anywhere from 5 minutes to well over half an hour after checking in, and they described feeling uncomfortable, anxious or impatient. One of my personas, a working parent, felt every minute in the waiting room was time she didn't have.

So the Check In App doesn't end at "submitted." It moves into a waiting room view. When Claude and I wireframed it, we built three concepts instead of two, because each one is a different bet on what people need:

• An activity hub. A home base with your place in line, quick games and short health reads. The bet: people want options.
• Straight into trivia. A true-or-false health question fills the screen the moment you're done. The bet: people want something to do, not something to choose.
• A health feed. Short reads ranked by relevance: first for your visit, then based on your history, then general wellness. The bet: people want to feel prepared.

All three share a points system to make the wait feel lighter.

I haven't picked a direction, and this choice matters more than most. The waiting room is the last thing patients see before the doctor, so it sets the tone for the whole product: playful, practical or reassuring.

Each bet has a catch. Points and streaks are built for apps you open every day, not one you open a few times a year. And a health feed is its own gamble. Health news tilts negative, and the wrong article in front of an already anxious patient could make the wait worse, not better.

The question I keep coming back to: what actually calms someone down right before they see a doctor? That's one for my next round of research, not for a wireframe.