2 designers + Cross-functional R&D team | 1 year | athenahealth | 2015

OVERVIEW

As a UX designer and researcher at athenahealth, I helped direct an effort to create the Epocrates' mobile application's first ever search engine and search experience.

Prior to this project, the app was navigated via a lookup index function, as well as browsing via a series of nested decision trees. What began as one Architect's side-project became a mission-critical effort as we looked to revitalize the experience of the beloved Epocrates app. Over time myself and a fellow designer helped moved UX from the periphery of the project to leading the way.

RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Envisioning & advocating project direction

  • Developing & executing qualitative and quantitative research plans

  • Contributing to scope & sprint planning

  • Collaborating with SMEs

  • Creating wireframes & specs

  • Working with engineers to nail execution

CHALLENGES

  • Project began as a feasibility pilot with no UX involvement or user considerations

  • Working with a team of new grad developers with no prior search experience

  • Switching from lookup to search completed disrupted users' sense of place, navigational model, and expectations from the app

  • Major change in an app that users had come to expect to be static

  • Search was swapped out in place of the current lookup feature, rather than being tested or added alongside

  • Constant technical hurdles due to working with an ancient codebase

  • Medical context means complex content and makes errors unacceptable

RESULTS & ACCOMPLISHMENTS

  • Executed a major feature release from ideation to delivery

  • Successfully advocated for and executed interaction & flow improvements over several sprints that mitigated user concerns, returning the app to a 5-star rating after a brief dip

  • Successfully shifted the feature focus from showing off an engineering feat to meeting (and exceeding) our users needs' and expectations.

  • Myself and fellow UXer James guided the search team to becoming a more cohesive, user-centered and product savvy team

SEARCH WALKTHROUGH

(March 2016 release)

Sub-projects completed

 

  • Pre-search

  • Teaser cards

  • Beta data

  • IA change: eliminating the "drug chooser" screen

  • Paywalled content preview

  • 'Discontinued Drug' cards

  • Spelling 'safety net'

  • Android catchup

  • (confidential) future concepting work

  • (confidential) commercial work

  • Feedback

  • Online / Offline mode

  • Rules engine design

  • Suggestions

  • Spell-check

  • Order ranking

  • Results facets

  • Readback

  • Training documentation for customer service team