Visual Design for WFP Desktop App
Making your pets visits more efficient
Making your pets visits more efficient
PROBLEM: The nation's largest pet hospital desktop app was 30+ years old and in in need of an update. The system was hard to use, harder to train new employees and required a fairly long learning curve for the primary users. The company I worked for was hired to solve this problem and produce an new PC client for the hospital chain.
MY ROLE: I was tasked with providing the interface design for this desktop application to help them better manage their business's day to day operations. I worked hand in hand with an interaction designer and UX designer to meet the clients needs.
WHAT I DELIVERED: Over 100 unique medical icons were illustrated for this application.
Visual polish that allowed the blue and grey branding choices to appear more airy and clean and less gloomy than its prior iteration.
Samples of the custom icons I created for the app. Sizes included in the final deliverable for the icons were: 16px, 24px, 32px, 48px.
Global style guide for the dev team to build their pattern library
Sample patient screen with order history
Scheduling a reminder screen
RESULTS:
The desktop client is now in use in over 100 pet hospitals across the country.
LESSONS LEARNED ON THE PROJECT: Value is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes spending $300 licensing stock icons to help define the application style and build up a good base and then only illustrating custom icons as needed can be deemed as too expensive for the project's budget versus spending hundreds of hours of labor required to illustrate a new icon set for the application.
Significant headaches occur when developers choose to not build a global pattern library when they code an application. The result is a less than successful implementation of the app's design, and much longer timelines to make the required changes a reality because it must all be done by hand.
User involvement and input was limited to after the application was deemed functional. I had moved on to another project when they started user testing the application.
