My Role: UX Manager
Key Activities: User Research, Data Synthesis, User Flows, Interaction Design - Wireframes for Desktop & Mobile,
Information Architecture
Software utilized: Sketch, Invision
Team size: Directly managed 6 designers
Project Overview
Challenge:
At Zoomcare, an urgent care provider, the existing Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system was identified as a bottleneck, leading to prolonged task completion times for healthcare professionals. The objective was to revamp the EMR system to enhance user experience, streamline workflows, and improve overall efficiency.
Solution:
We led a comprehensive UX and technical overhaul, modernizing the app’s foundation and implementing a company-wide design system to improve consistency and enable rapid iteration. By simplifying workflows and aligning cross-functional teams, we reduced clinic task completion times by 50%+, empowering staff with a faster, more intuitive system.
My Role:
UX Design Manager — Led a team of six designers across six product domains. I directed design strategy, facilitated workshops, established the design system, and ensured alignment across product, engineering, and executive teams.
The Problem
Task completion times were too long, creating frustration for busy healthcare staff.
Inconsistent UI across different domains of the app created unnecessary cognitive load.
New feature development was slow due to a fragmented design process and technical debt.
There was no centralized design system, meaning every domain was solving design problems independently.
Research & Discovery
We started by interviewing healthcare staff (our primary users) across multiple roles — physicians, nurses, and administrative staff — to map their workflows and pain points. We also:
Audited existing EMR screens for usability issues and inconsistencies.
Collaborated with product and engineering to identify technical limitations.
Key Insights
Fragmented Workflows: Users navigated across inconsistent screens for similar tasks.
High Cognitive Load: Inconsistent patterns required frequent re-learning.
Technical Bottlenecks: New features took too long to ship due to both design fragmentation and underlying technical debt.
Design Process
1. Workflow Reengineering
Through detailed user journey mapping, we analyzed current workflows to identify pain points and inefficiencies. Employing iterative wireframing and prototyping, we redesigned these workflows to better align with user mental models, thereby reducing cognitive load and task completion times. Ongoing usability testing ensured our solutions remained user-centric and effective.
2. Design System Implementation
We initiated the project by conducting a comprehensive heuristic evaluation of the existing EMR interface to identify usability issues and inconsistencies. Leveraging these insights, we developed a centralized design system comprising standardized UI components and interaction patterns. This system facilitated a cohesive user experience and streamlined the design-to-development handoff, enhancing efficiency across all product domains.
3. Cross-Functional Design Sprints
We conducted a series of design sprints to rapidly ideate, prototype, and validate solutions for key EMR pain points. Each sprint brought together product managers, engineers, and clinical stakeholders to ensure alignment from the outset.Each sprint followed a structured process:Problem framing and goal setting to align on the specific challenge.
Lightning demos to gather inspiration and review relevant design patterns.
Sketching and solution generation to rapidly explore multiple approaches.
Prototyping and usability testing to validate ideas with real users before development.
By embedding design sprints into the process, we accelerated decision-making, reduced rework, and fostered shared ownership across teams.
Lesson Learned
Design systems aren't just a design tool — they are critical to enabling faster development cycles and reducing technical debt.
Co-creation accelerates adoption — involving stakeholders early (especially engineering and clinical teams) created shared ownership, making adoption much smoother.
UX and technical modernization go hand in hand — solving UX problems in a legacy system is difficult if the underlying tech cannot support modern patterns.
What I'd do differently next time
More proactive storytelling. Showcasing wins (like reduced times) more regularly to leadership could have built even more momentum for future investments.
Embed quantitative usability metrics directly into the design system’s governance process, ensuring that every new feature and iteration includes measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) tied to usability.
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