Design of Doctor Appointment Booking Platform

Afya.AI is a digital appointment booking platform built to replace slow, fragmented hospital scheduling with a system that works for both patients and hospital staff. The project focused on transforming an offline, error-prone process into a clear, accessible experience grounded in real hospital workflows.

Healthcare scheduling was built around friction. Patients waited in lines, made repeated phone calls, or visited hospitals in person just to secure an appointment. On the hospital side, staff lacked a centralized way to manage queues, doctor availability, or last-minute changes. The result was missed appointments, scheduling conflicts, and frustration on both ends.

Healthcare scheduling isn’t predictable and pretending it is creates more problems. Doctors run late. Emergencies happen. Patients value transparency more than rigid structure. A successful system had to reflect this reality instead of forcing hospital workflows into idealized time slots.

The opportunity: design flexibility into the system without sacrificing clarity.

Two distinct needs shaped every decision:

Hospital admins needed speed, control, and visibility across queues and schedules.

Patients needed trust, simplicity, and reassurance before committing to care.

Designing for one without breaking the other was the central tension of the product.

Designing around real behavior, not assumptions. Research was conducted inside hospitals through observation and direct conversations with staff and patients. These insights informed personas, workflows, and feature prioritization, ensuring the MVP reflected how scheduling actually happens on the ground.

User testing revealed that many hospitals preferred queue numbers over fixed time slots due to unpredictable schedules. Instead of forcing a single model, the system was redesigned to support both time-based and number-based bookings allowing hospitals to operate on their own terms.

Afya.ai replaced a fragmented offline process with a flexible, trust-driven scheduling system. By aligning the product with real hospital workflows and patient expectations, the platform reduced friction, improved coordination, and created a more humane healthcare booking experience.