Problem statement

As part of our oncology decision support suite, one of the views for each patient shows the patient's history of tests, treatments, and diagnoses over time. This allows the oncologist to quickly determine what tests or treatments would best serve the patient's needs at this time.

Because oncology patients generate a large amount of test findings and data during their cancer journey, it's extremely important in this context to understand how to curate and present the most important data points in a way that is readable and accurate.

The problem we tried to solve with this effort was understanding how pilot users were making use of this interface so we could make useful improvements for version 2.

Goals and objectives

As part of my deliverables for this project, I framed the following goals and objectives:

Develop  a unified framework for patient journey views for all use cases

Iterate on existing patterns leveraging user-centric design process

Deliver long-awaited features and upgrades

Provide the best possible decision support experience consistently across our portfolio

Facilitate the rapid design and development of new features and content as Patient Journey grows

Research

As part of this project we performed continuous evaluation and validation by working oncologists to ensure we were providing a useful and valuable resource for improving patient outcomes. Based on this research, I created a presentation to explain the feedback we received from pilot and research users, and how we intended to address this feedback in the user experience design of Version 2.

User experience issues I decided to address based on the research

Users would like to be able to filter data

Early reports from pilot users indicated the need and desire to filter data by type.

During our research sessions I presented a possible view of what that might look like using our current filtering pattern.

Users indicated that they liked the idea, but the design we asked them to look at would need some work.

This let me know that the filtering experience would need a prominent place in the new design.

Users would like to be able to read the data without having to interact to make items readable

Early reports from pilot users indicated that for most patients, the initial view of the data was cluttered and overlapped too much to be able to read anything.

During our research sessions, I presented a version of what the timeline might look like if the overlapping was replaced with stacking.

Users responded positively, but let me know that the labels could be even more succinct than I had made them.

This let me know that this would be an important factor to prioritize in the new design.

Users would like the timeline to show them where the major changes or "cut points" have taken place, to point them towards the most useful information

Early reports from pilot users indicated that the way we presented information "flatly" gave the user no good indication of where to point their eyeballs.

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I decided to lead my team in a design exercise to brainstorm what a view like this could look like. We showed them a view that aggregated the patient's data to show where the periods of activity were.

Users responded very positively to this idea, which let me know that this was a design component I should prioritize in the upcoming research.

Ideation

Based on this research, I led my design team in an exercise to imagine what the patient journey might look like today if we were starting from scratch. Ultimately we decided that users responded well to the swimlane design we had been using and it would be more efficient to continue iterating on that design.

Deliverables

In order to facilitate the design of this new version, I provided the following completed deliverables

Overall screen layout

In the first deliverable, I presented the new overall view of the screen along with our goals for this project and a guide to the other deliverables in this set.

Event atoms

One of my own personal goals for this redesign was to develop a repeatable pattern for specificying how different kinds of data should be displayed, to make it easier to integrate new data types in the future and to simplify and clean up our existing interface.

Because I had spent many years studying this data and solving design problems inside of it, I was able to divide the types of content we display into categories, and then specify how each category should be displayed.

Content filtering

Activity histogram

Based on the research that indicated that users would like to see the areas of activity for each patient, my team and I did some brainstorming on different solutions, but ultimately I decided that a histogram of the patient's activity would be the most readable, recognizable, and functional solution. I produced this multi-part deliverable to describe how I envisioned it.

Row interactions

This multi-part deliverable showed how we could add new functionality to the existing row label area to enhance user's ability to customize the view according to their needs.

Event marker interactions

This multi-part deliverable shows how event markers are interacted with by the user and documents the new standardized toolbar I proposed for this redesign.

Event marker preview content

In this deliverable I provided updated specifications for delaying all of the content types, with a streamlined, unified, and simplified structure.

Figma design library

As part of designing the deliverables for this project, I also created a standalone Figma library to structure and reuse all of the components.

Because of the technical nature of this content, the accuracy and content of the interfaces that we provide must always have real-ish content that can be accurately evaluated by a user. To facilitate this requirement, I created a system to store each possible row of content so that it only had to be created once and never had to be re-created again.

Outcomes and reflections

Unfortunately my time with this project came to an end before I could see it built, but at the time that I left the project it was just on the verge of being developed. I hope that the designers, developers and product managers who get to continue this project in the future find my work helpful to their efforts.