HIS systems in healthcare must meet unique challenges: huge amounts of data, high workloads, and the need for maximum transparency. Our client, a medical software developer, faced a problem after years of expanding functionality: the interface of their hospital system no longer met user expectations. After years of expanding the functionality of their hospital system, our client, a medical software developer, found that the interface no longer met user expectations.
We were commissioned to design a modern, intuitive and flexible solution that would address the genuine needs of doctors and nurses. After conducting research and running workshops, and designing hundreds of screens from scratch, we delivered an interface that supports staff in their daily work and genuinely improves the quality of patient care.
Learn more about our project:
- Industry: Healthcare
- Project type: UI, UX, research, concept
- Scope of work: HIS-class system
- Commissioned task: UI redesign
- Main outcome: A comprehensive development of a new system, covering the entire UX and UI design process from the ground up
- Implementation period: 2022–2024
- EDISONDA team composition: Piotr Dziadowicz (Lead UX Designer), Anna Bielak (UX Designer), Rafał Bochniak (Senior UI Designer), Urszula Kozieł (Product Designer), Miłosz Michałowski-Żuk (Lead Product Designer), Magdalena Malinowska (Product Designer), Ewa Golik (Project Manager).
Why the client contacted us: issues, challenges and early indicators
The system’s interface, which the Client’s company had successfully implemented in medical facilities for many years, was no longer meeting user expectations. In response to user needs, the system had been continuously expanded with new features. However, its interface had not been thoroughly redesigned for almost two decades.
As a result, the screens were filled with dozens of links in expandable sections. Recognising the importance of user behaviour and needs, the software producer reached out to us for support in delivering a clear, highly usable interface. This was crucial in the dynamic, information-heavy environments of both closed (hospitals) and open (clinics) healthcare facilities.
The existing version of the system did not meet users’ needs. For example:
- the ability to quickly switch between screens and patients while maintaining the previously selected context,
- organising data hierarchies in an intuitive and logical manner,
- optimising information management on individual screens,
- automating processes to reduce excessive clicking.
What defines the success of the project
We began our collaboration by attempting to redesign the existing interface. We agreed that without overhauling the way users interact with the system, we would not be able to deliver a ‘new quality’ for medical staff. To plan effective actions for the upcoming months, we began the design process by creating a detailed system roadmap.
Step by step (and workshop by workshop), we began to define the functional specifications for the individual screens. This process started with early sketches, which allowed us to quickly visualise ideas and create main design principles. Then we moved on to interviews with medical staff and finally to highly detailed screen maps (screenflows), which covered both common and more unusual use cases.
By the end of the project, we had delivered:
- Approximately 230 designed screens for desktop devices,
- A thorough redesign of key processes (e.g., prescribing and dispensing medication, planning procedures and surgeries, retrospective analysis),
- A project-specific design system based on the Bootstrap frontend framework, extended with custom components tailored to the: a) unique characteristics of a hospital system, b) and the numerous information status indicators.
How the collaboration unfolded: stages, methods and lessons learned
Phase 1: Analysis of the current system state and user interviews with nursing and medical staff, as well as the implementation team.
- Goal: To identify the biggest issues with the current system and understand user needs.
- Activities and methods: In-depth individual interviews and AS-IS screenflow mapping.
- Outcome of the phase: Through conversations with users, we gained a deep understanding of how medical staff work with the software. One key insight is that the software itself is never the most important thing because the patient always comes first. However, providing proper patient care requires all essential information to be available in the system in an easy-to-use, intuitive and clear way. The software exists to serve the patient, not the other way around.
Phase 2: Designing the concept of the new system
- Goal: Develop core design principles and navigation patterns
- Activities and methods: Lo-fi wireframes, screenflows, paper prototypes, domain model, sketches, workshops, hi-fi mockups
- Outcome of the phase: We designed the main screen flow based on one of the system’s key screens (functions), which helped us establish core design principles that were later applied consistently across other elements of the system. At this stage, we also created the UI concept and the foundational design system, which formed the basis for the final designs.
We consider this to be one of the most important phases of the project.
Phase 3: Planning and design
- Goal: Define the project scope and design the most important parts of the system
- Activities and methods: Planning, UX and UI design, user interviews, guerrilla testing
- Outcome of the phase: Together with the client’s team, we continuously planned the work, conducted workshops, and designed successive system functionalities. We frequently presented early concepts to medical staff and iteratively improved our designs based on their feedback.
This was the most time-consuming phase, involving the largest number of designed screenflows and finalised views. Including the base screens and their variants, there were hundreds of detailed interaction designs and interface states.
What we learned from this project
A typical customer journey (or rather, nurse/doctor journey) is not a suitable tool for mapping content and interactions within a HIS-class system due to the diversity of patients and their conditions, as well as certain local approaches to organising work.
The unpredictability of medical cases and the differences in workflows, even between departments within the same hospital, mean that a linear approach to process design must be replaced with more complex methods, such as domain model mapping. The interface must be highly flexible and capable of supporting the most common use cases, as well as providing users with access to at least a dozen complementary functions.
