Unfortunately for those working in the medical field, well-designed medical software has long been hard to come by. That’s why being tasked with entirely redesigning a medical company’s program is not something to be taken lightly. The old program, while being difficult to read at times and relatively dated in terms of design, was still being used by quite a few medical practices around the world. This meant that any adjustments we made on the new platform would have to be intuitive enough for users that were accustomed to the old platform to be confident in making the switch. While this limited the way we constructed our workflows, we wanted to make sure that we weren’t compromising efficiency for conformity.

The main thing that stands out to me as an inherent difference between Product Design and almost any other kind of design is the amount of focus that needs to be dedicated to creating a positive and logical experience for the user. Yes, with things like publications and business cards the user is considered, but they aren’t clicking through the book and typing in forms on the business cards. With every screen we designed and every entry form we structured, we went in with the mindset of “Is this the best, most efficient way for me to consistently do this task?” The design team met with the product owners twice a week to show updated workflows allowing for the designers to have almost immediate feedback from the perspective of the user. The project is still being worked on but the interface, as it’s been laid out so far, is a stark improvement on the old program and a vision of a promising future for medical software design.