UX CASE STUDY
Modernized legacy medical EMR web application (anonymous due to an NDA) , which deals with everything related to clinical management and patient treatment.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
The Product
A clinical management system (EMR) which provides staff communication, lab reports, patient encounter documentation, etc.
Project Duration
March 2020 - Dec 2020
Problem Statement
A 16 year old software which has gone through various updates by different teams in this duration. The product feels outdated and users have been complaining about navigation and inconsistencies.
Goals of the Project
To update the legacy application thereby solving the problems being faced by the users. The new app needs to be Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) rules compliant and responsive.
My Roles and Responsibilities
Team Lead
Design Strategy and WBS.
Collaboration with the development & business analysis teams.
Writing the Product User Stories for the development rules.
UI/UX Designer
Design Sprints:
Research
Ideation
Information architecture
Prototyping
Testing
Communication with the cliental team for approval.
Style guide maintenance and documentation email, print and document designs of the system.
This project contains 1200+ screens and I have designed 500+ screens across several modules,
Outcome
DESIGN PROCESS
Iterative and non linear design thinking was adopted where user was kept at the centre. At the same time, technical feasibility and business viability were considered.
USER RESEARCH
Research Summary
User interviews through zoom meetings to understand how the users presently accomplish the task and which areas can improve. I interviewed 4 users from various clinics and hospitals to get more insight into their motivation and pain points. By talking, observing, engaging and empathizing with them, I was able to pull few key findings that would help shape the project. Competitive analysis was done to understand competition better.
Research Pain Points
User was not able to access the application in mobile or tablet.
There was a lot of information overload in the older application.
Application was not accessible.
Application was too complex and required a lot of training for the new users.
DEFINING PROBLEM
Problem statement(s)
There were multiple problem statements for different scenarios, an example of it is:
For searching through the patients existing in the system:
To provide a globally available flow for searching patients in the system, seeing their demographic info, and adding a new patient if needed.
User personas
Different personas were created for different problem statements/scenarios as the application is used by different kinds of users- billing clerks, lab technicians, doctors of various kinds, nurses, clinic administrators, etc.
IDEATING
Brainstorming
Sessions conducted included participants from wide range of teams like the business, development, testing, client teams to identify implicit and explicit user needs.
Affinity diagrams and journey maps were created.
User flow diagram
To illustrate the user flow within the application, several user flows were discussed.
Low fidelity wireframes
As simplicity and ease of use were one of the major focus in this project, the screens
were designed to increase the learnability and memorability of the application. With pen and paper wireframes, multiple version of each screen were created to increase intuitively as much as possible.
These were presented to the clients and users to get their feedback and comments in iteration.
PROTOTYPING
Wireframes: High Fidelity
These were created and shown to users for testing and initial ideation to filter out the best solutions through A/B testing, co-designing, and other approaches.
High fidelity Prototypes
These were created and iterated over user testing and feedback cycles.
I will not be able to share the link to prototype as I'm under an NDA to not disclose any information from the software. However, I have tried to explain the process clearly without revealing much details about the application.
TESTING
Medium: Remotely through Zoom and Maze.
Conducted A/B and usability tests over different features of the app in different iterations.
Heat Maps were evaluated to see where users hovered the most vs where the mouse actually clicked.
Used heuristic evaluations for analysis to iterate the prototypes over multiple cycles.
WRITING USER STORIES
To clearly communicate the system behaviour to the development team and to ensure a good User experience:
Wrote user stories mentioning the exact scenarios when a click happens over an element considering all conditions.
Described all user flows in detail to make sure what has been designed on the basis of user observation is implemented correctly.
We used Jira for this purpose.
REFLECTION OVER LEARNING
It is helpful to involve a wide range of participants in the ideation sessions for the design sprints.
Team work is very important to achieve desirable results out of a project.
It i very important to understand the strengths of each designer from your team while deciding on the design strategy.
I am one of those people who likes to make things "nearly" perfect because I have realized that, perfection can be an illusion, and trying to make things perfect is a never-ending process.
Perfection and meeting deadlines is a tight rope walk and learning how to balance these in a trade off results in the optimum solution.
I learnt that listening is the most important skill to have in a meeting. Listen patiently to what the clients have to say, you might get answers to some of your questions before you even ask. Time spent listening carefully in the beginning saves rework in the future.
Thank you for reading. We are glad and humbled to have offered our services to the healthcare industry in the unprecedented challenging times of Covid-19 outbreak.
