Research Question:

How can medical students be better supported during their process of connecting with ongoing health and wellbeing work in St. Louis communities?

I worked as a researcher/designer in a small team with engineers, designers, and marketing specialists. An essential part of my role was conducting user interviews with current WashU medical students and analyzing existing resources to understand the current state of community engagement opportunities.

We focused on three key areas: volunteer and networking opportunities within the St. Louis community, medical school programs and resources, and the transition challenges from undergraduate to medical school life.

Primary Research:

Each team member conducted an in-depth interview with a local medical students in order to gain insights into the realities of medical school life and community engagement.

Some key findings:

• Students are passionate about community service but struggle with time management and finding suitable opportunities

• The transition from undergraduate volunteering to medical school creates information gaps

• Students value hands-on experiences that complement their clinical education

• Since med school students are already busy, they want structured programs that don’t add overwhelming commitments

Secondary Research:

For our secondary research we analyzed three categories of existing resources:

1. Community Volunteer Opportunities: programs like Schnucks Screening for health screenings and Pediatric Life Savers for infant CPR training

2. Medical School Resources: student organizations like AMA and WUSM-GO gaming club, plus research support through MERU

3. Transition Support: best practices for adapting from undergraduate to medical school life including study habits and wellness tips

Key Insights Discovered:

• Information about opportunities exists but is scattered across multiple platforms and documents (lack of centralization)

• Students need better categorization and filtering of opportunities based on factors such as time commitment, interest area, and skill level

• The gap between wanting to help and finding the right fit creates frustration and missed connections

• Students benefit from peer experiences and mentorship in choosing community engagement

Design Implications:

Our research pointed us towards a solution that would provide clear categorization and allow students to consider factors such as time commitment and interest area to help them find the right volunteer opportunities.

For our final prototype, my team and I decided on a chrome extension which allows users to filter their search engine results based on various factors: time preference, location, fields of interest, and weekly hours. Using a color coding system, the chrome extension highlights each search result in red, yellow, or green, demonstrating the level of compatibility according to the user’s preferences.

Our research provided a foundation for understanding how medical schools can better connect their students to community volunteering. We discovered valuable insights into the intersection of medical education, community engagement, and user experience design, developing a practical solution for a complex, large scale issue.

Our chrome extension was presented to a board of designers and medical students, and received received positive feedback for its practical and intuitive design.