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AlayaCare
Scheduling UX Design

A UX redesign for AlayaCare's Add New Visit and Visit Overview workflows.

D—Leo

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Research

Ideation

Designs

UI/UX redesign

Optimizing a scheduling
workflow and dashboard
for the
healthcare
industry

Scheduling Home Visits With Modularity

Client

AlayaCare

Timeline

January 2022 – January 2023

Project

  • Reduce time on task
  • Decreasing clickstream
  • Employing progressive disclosure

Role

  • Lead UI/UX designer
  • Spearhead user research and interviews
  • Redesign for the product’s Scheduling user base

Team

  • Designers
  • Product Managers
  • Developers
  • UX Researcher

Tech

Company

User

Challenge

Role and constraints

THE COMPANY

Bringing care into
the home space

AlayaCare is a cloud software suite helping home care service agencies. As a B2B SaaS, AlayaCare helps customers optimize their operations to achieve better health outcomes.
  • Serving users across the US, Canada, and Australia
  • Public and private sector customers
  • 1000s of DAUs

THE USER

Meaningful workers in a meaningful space

Scheduling users are busy, white collar administrators, in office-like settings. Their day-to-day? Constantly managing disruptions.
Multi-tasking, keyboard ninjas
  • Cycling through multiple open browser tabs
  • Consuming large amounts of information
Blocked by data inaccessibility
  • Slow load times
  • Dispersed data
  • Poor data visualization
Any work obstacles lead to missed visits, which leads to missed care.

USER DEEP DIVE

Every click counts because every second counts.

Schedulers are responsible for all agency visits and clients. When issues arise, they rapidly jump into unknown files to resolve any problems.
Schedulers operate across many different spaces
  • Optimize physical/digital spaces to send/receive data
  • Jump around domains: Employee/Client/Accounting
They combine knowledge and data to make decisions
  • Deep knowledge of agency’s staff and processes
  • Institutional knowledge of government policies
So they need to quickly scan for relevant data and have access to the appropriate actions.

THE CHALLENGE

Not a pleasant home for users

Poor NPS results led to a company initiative: re-design the Scheduling workflows “Add Visit” & “View Visit” to improve performance.
‍The goal: +25% NPS score.
For users, every click counts
Day-to-day: managing disruptions
Jumping into unknown case files
Errors cause missed care
User work made easier by scannable data
Adding a Visit is long and bulky. For the Scheduler, there are too many choices, clicks, and screen changes.
Upon starting the workflow, users face a data challenge.
No safeguards: showing all data fields upon launch leads to errors
Data entry has forwards (blue) and backwards (orange) implications that are invisible
Context
  • Add Visit modal shows many data entry fields upon launch
  • But underlying entry order/ chronology is specific and invisible
Problem
  • Making entry changes mid-creation leads to errors
  • Errors only flagged upon “save”
user research preview
  • Interviews later revealed that the hidden dependencies/chronology complicates on-boarding new users
The next hurdle is assigning Employees:
Staffing a visit triggers 2 screen changes, adding click time
Employee Finder modal opens inside Add Visit Modal
Context
  • New modal opens on top of old one
  • To view data, user has to toggle between Metrics and Calendar
Problem
  • Toggling between data visualization views is inconvenient
  • Makes Employee Finder feature feel supplementary and impotent
user research preview
  • Interviews later revealed that the Finder feature is not widely adopted/ used in our customers’ task flows
Adding other data forces users to “save” the Visit and then immediately open it for “editing”:
Sending an Employee a Visit Shift Offer is blocked until post-creation
50% of created visits require editing post-creation, past Step 3
Context
  • Real-life visit creation user tasks straddle in-app Add Visit and View Visit workflows
Problem
  • Users forced to “complete” a visit creation—leaving the Employee field empty even if they know who they want to assign—just to gain access to visit actions post-creation.
  • Some agencies regularly compensate/ reimburse Employees for expenses using Premiums
user research preview
  • Interviews later revealed that for the agencies who used Premiums, this was a huge time drain
Users forced to open the newly created Visit to finish their work. The problem? The View Visit screen is a poor dashboard as it often hides data by overusing tabs.
When opening the View screen, users land on tabulated content that they often navigate away from:
“Info” tab lacks actually useful info, forcing users to click elsewhere
A visit’s information is over-compartmentalized across 10 tabs
Context
  • View Visit screen has tabulated content that varies in quantity/quality
Problem
  • Most valuable data for most users appear in other tabs
  • This means most users waste a click when opening this screen
user research preview
  • Interviews later revealed that the “Edit”, “Offer,” and “Premium” tabs are the most used
“Edit” tab contains useful visit info, but visit actions live in other tabs
Actions like Cancel Visit are on the landing tab, but related info is in another tab
Context
  • View Visit screen has tabulated content that varies in quantity/quality
Problem
  • Visit actions, like applying a new Status or adding a Premium, requires consulting info in Edit tab
  • But visit actions live in Info tab, forcing users to tab back and forth
Overall, the Add Visit and View Visit UX are time-heavy, disorganized, and lack enough space for new features.

MY ROLE AND CONSTRAINTS

Designing a new space for Scheduling design

Scheduling team had a sense “why” UX work was needed, but they were lacking the framework to justify “what” work. I was able to achieve this by creating space:
Scope space
Solve broader Scheduling issues
Research space
Conduct end-user interviews
Innovation space
Build new UI patterns
I led the UI/UX re-design and succeeded by leveraging research and people, while navigating multiple constraints:
Time
  • Very short discovery time of 1 month
  • Sporadic team PTO
  • Meetings across timezones of 3 hr difference
Technology
  • Technical and Design debt: increased unknowns
  • Design System UI library change: PrimeVue
  • Design Team stack change: Sketch–Framer–Figma
My most difficult constraint? Resourcing knowledge and expertise from stakeholders operating in different domains.

MY TEAM

Adapting to project demands with adaptive micro-teams

I was flexible with resources of time and labour, and I did so by creating efficient, on-demand micro-collaborations.
Short SME collaborations
  • Customer account reps
  • UX Researcher / Writer
  • DevOps
  • Healthcare SMEs
Team inter-dependencies
  • Dependent on Design System changes
  • Dependent on Design Team tooling changes
  • Dependent on Customer Service contacts
  • Sporadic team PTO, regional holidays
I formed 6 micro-teams for different project stages:
My most successful partnership? Research and discovery.

MY ETHIC

Listening for maximum
‍user research impact

I hit a major obstacle searching for data on user pains:
Asynchronous
Data collected over many years of app development changes
Secondhand
Pain points collected indirectly through Customer Support team
Not centralized
Information not centrally store and documented.
I knew I needed reliable research to justify a design direction. So I organized interviews and heard real user experiences.
The result? I discovered a hidden theme of user problems: lack of space.

Research findings

Ideation and design

Testing

THE RESEARCH

Digging into the user’s space

The research I collected took the form of 6 methodologies: competitor analysis, an internal UI audit, user flow diagrams, an IA footprint analysis, user device usage metrics, and user interviews.
For users, every click counts
Day-to-day: managing disruptions
Jumping into unknown case files
Errors cause missed care
User work made easier by scannable data
Competitor analysis
Many apps make use of segregated, contextual space
  • I looked at how other scheduling apps visualized their information
  • Lots of UI diversity
  • Examples include drawers or slide-outs
User device usage metrics
User device screen size larger than assumed
Over 50% of users
in Scheduling...
... use a device screen  wider than 1280 px.
methodology
  • Spearheaded combining Amplitude automated data with Survicate human responses
Internal UI audit
Modals and drop-downs are overused components
An audit of Scheduling modal patterns revealed 13 discreet variations
13 modal variations
methodology
  • I looked at all the Scheduling UX flows and their UI
Finding
  • Unsustainable diversity in patterns
User flow diagrams
Big win: Integrating Shift Offers into Match UX
Audit of Scheduling modal patterns revealed 13 discreet variations
From 7 clicks to 4
methodology
  • I looked at all the Scheduling UX flows and their UI
Finding
  • Discovered that adding SO to Add Visit would solve a lot of user pain
IA footprint analysis
UX requires a lot of movement across IA
Audit of the User Journey and its footprint on the Scheduling IA
Explainer: metrics and benchmarks used to measure user pains
Visualization of the Add Visit variations, based on user needs
Employee Finder modal opens inside Add Visit Modal
2 page changes
2–4 modals opened
5–9 buttons
methodology
  • I mapped out the User Journey within the Add Visit and View Visit flows, and the impact on IA
  • Each UJ step was given an ID
Finding
  • Unnecessarily large workflow footprint on IA, creating a “trip”
User Interviews
Conducted 17 end-user interviews over 2 months
goals
  • Identify specific pain points
  • Validate older complaints
  • Capture user’s emotional state
Our findings? More user pains than previously assumed:

USER DEEP DIVE

What we discovered from what our users said.

The user interviews topics covered and produced:
2 workflows
6 findings
10 proposals
Here are results in detail:
Add Visit workflow
1. Better hand-off and transition between UX flows
Real-life UJ straddles 3 disconnected flows: Client Intake, Add Visit, View Visit
Having a unified workflow would be good because “we schedule the entire series of visits” at the point when client enters the service.
Unify Add Visit and View Visit workflows in fewer screens
Provide quick action to “Create and Open” the newly saved visit
2. Expand Date and Time feature functionality
Change visit times and recurrence frequently
Need more complex recurrence options for their business
Improve logic of Date, Time, and Duration fields
Design a multi-recurrence UX for complex visits
3. Upstream Shift Offer and develop a Send All action
Be able to send SO during Add Visit
“That would definitely be very helpful when they create a brand new visit, knowing that it will be a vacancy and send it off.”
Send a bulk SO to all available contractors
Add Shift Offer functionality to Employee Matching
Design Send All quick action for bulk sending Shift Offers
View Visit workflow
1. Dashboard with more scannable data
Add/View Visit tasks are equally ultra high frequency and unplanned/sporadic
Experience Task-to-Visit-Start-Time of under 24 hours
More cards, less tabs: create info modules with hierarchy
2. More data immediately visible upon dashboard launch
Most users believe Info tab provides value, would like to see more condensed data
“I think it would enhance [my work].”
“It would be an improvement.”
Navigate to Edit tab for very frequent use
Navigate to Offer tab for very frequent use, Premium tab for frequent use, and TA tab for occasional use
Need omni-visible client and employee contact info
Condense and combine content, sorting new cards and tabs
3. Upstream and condense Visit Status update UX
Apply/Edit a visit’s Cancel or Hold status
Make Visit Status UX omni-available, outside of all tabs
Bring Accounting content and condense it into Info tab

IDEATION

A new space
for a New Experience

The research suggested that all our issues were space-related. Believing we had to design a new Scheduling,
I proposed a space-related solution: a new sidebar UI component.
Sidebar, the perfect proposal
New component to replace modals and define a new contextual space
Sidebars introduce 3rd spaces that are contextual to a user task
DETAILS
  • Allows more vertical space
  • Displays complex content or workspaces
  • Used for heavy subtasks while remaining “near” main task
Strategy session white-boarding
Mapping data “buckets” within existing IA, proposing a new organization
Information Architecture, before
Information Architecture, proposed
Low-fidelity wireframing
Demonstrating minimized and expanded sidebar concept
High-level Sidebar concept, sliding out
Mid-fidelity wireframing
New progressive disclosure and placement of data fields
Proposed
Current
Going through Add Visit’s main 6 steps is more visually focused
Same number of steps, clear progression
  • Focused progression of data fields
  • Appear as previous fields are filled
New Date and Time field logic that updates responsively
Data and Time fields respond to each other, reducing user input when they change one field
Proposed
Current
Smarter fields,
less steps
  • Real-time data logic that updates Date, Time, and Duration fields
  • As user edits one field, others update
New recurrence workflow, with space for multi-recurrence
Recurrence treated as a self-contained UX, with space for muture multiple recurrences
Current
Proposed
Same steps,
more functionality
  • Workflow now a repeatable pattern
  • Repetition allows creating multiple recurrence series for the same visit
Combining Employee Calendar and Metric views into one
Proposal to combine the Calendar and Metric views of Employee data into one
Current / Proposed
Merged screens, reduced 7 steps to 4
  • Combines Calendar and Metric data
  • Places new view within Sidebar, as opposed to modal screen

Modifying frontend designs to reduce backend calls

Slow load time was a persistent and recurring user pain.
Occurs throughout Scheduling
  • Refreshing calendars
  • Opening visit details
Caused by backend call volume
  • DAUs making data edits
  • Every “save” event
My early designs were flagged as backend-heavy. This was due to the fact that modularizing “edits,” a research insight, would increase the number of “saves.”
An engineering consultation led to a “one save” solution.
The result? My design change led to faster performance with no UX impact.

TESTING AND VALIDATION

The design space in the real-world

I developed an interactive prototype, with specific user tasks, simulating input and functionality in order to test my design proposals.
1-on-1 user feedback and testing sessions
  • Same participants as research interviews
  • Remote and moderated test
  • Gave users simple tasks to complete using the prototype
Interactive prototype for user testing
New Add Visit, with a “Save and Open” transition to the new Visit Dashboard
High-level Sidebar concept, sliding out
New Visit Dashboard, opening from Calendar page
High-level Sidebar concept, sliding out

USER DEEP DIVE

Our proposed solutions,
our users’ impressions.

I embedded my research into the prototype and tested:
2/2 workflows
6/6 findings
9/10 proposals
Here is the feedback of the user testing:
Add Visit workflow
1. Better hand-off and transition between UX flows
Unify Add Visit and View Visit workflows in fewer screens
Provide quick action to “Create and Open” the newly saved visit
2. Expand Date and Time feature functionality
Improve logic of Date, Time, and Duration fields
Design a multi-recurrence UX for complex visits
3. Upstream Shift Offer and develop a Send All action
Add Shift Offer functionality to Employee Matching
Design Send All quick action for bulk sending Shift Offers
View Visit workflow
1. Dashboard with more scannable data
More cards, less tabs: create info modules with hierarchy
Mixed reactions: some found new module positions harder to find
Temporary problem: users remarked features’ new locations will become familiar with use
2. More data immediately visible upon dashboard launch
Condense and combine content, sorting new cards and tabs
3. Upstream and condense Visit Status update UX
Bring Accounting content and condense it into Info tab
Make Visit Status UX omni-available, outside of all tabs
Discoverability: Visit status UI hard to find
Novelty effect: new feature will become recognizable

End-state designs

Impacts

Personal learnings

END STATE DESIGNS

New space,
new Add Visit, new Scheduling

Combining research and testing efforts, I designed and produced multiple iterations of New Visit UX, eventually culminating into a production-ready project.
Structured file for efficient hand-off
  • Component naming
  • Design token grouping
Created v1 and v2 iterations
  • Collaborated with Product and Dev Leadership to define timeline
  • Divided design file into Prod versions 1 and 2
New Visit Experience
Add Visit 2.0
Unify Add Visit and View Visit workflows in fewer screens
Provide quick action to “Create and Open” new visit
Design a multi-recurrence UX for complex visits
ML Auto-suggestion: Best Employee Selection
Upstream Shift Offer UX; design Bulk Send All quick action
Visit Dashboard 2.0
More cards, less tabs: combine and condense info, make it scannable
Make Visit Status UX omni-available, outside of all tabs
Bring Accounting content and condense it into Info tab

IMPACTS

Adding to the Team and the Product

New Visit Experience became a company first—a fully data-driven project, conception to testing. It now is a benchmark for future projects.
Impacts to the User
“Because it’s a common task, it’s nice [it’s on] the landing page on a visit.”
Product Consultant, enterprise customer (AUS Market)
“From the billing side of things, we use that Information screen quite often just to kind of see a snapshot if something special happens.”
CLIENT CARE MANAGER, SMB CUSTOMER (CAD MARKET)
“When I get a new referral, it’s step by step by step [workflow without interuption until completion].”
THERAPY CO-ORDINATOR, ENTERPRISE CUSTOMER, (CAD MARKET)
“There are many times that I would open [the Visit Dialogue box] and I would need that Information screen.”
Nurse Scheduling Co-ordinator, ENTERPRISE CUSTOMER (US Market)
Data better visualized and organized
Tasks and workflows now aligned and streamlined
  • Real-life and in-app are now synced
Impacts to the Team
“Thanks for jumping in head-first into our Scheduling projects and bringing a new and fresh perspective to the team.”
Senior PRODUCT MANAGER
“You definitely made a positive impact on our team and the way we see our collective work.”
Senior Staff developer
“Thanks for being such a critical, creative and hilarious member of our team.”
DIRECTOR of PrODCUT DESIGN
Moving away from a no-research culture
  • I was instrumental in raising the  value of user research and testing
New Discovery framework for Scheduling
  • Team now has a new Discovery methodology for future projects

DESIGN DEEP DIVE

The best customer buy-in is
‍early customer buy-in.

What would I do differently? To better assess if customers’ long-term business goals align with their users’ operations, I would involve customers earlier in the research process.
This project was a massive undertaking of incredible complexity and sensitivity and I am enormously grateful for the learning and growing I did.

UI/UX redesign

Thank you
for reading
about my
process!

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