Accuro Healthcare Solutions is a Healthcare IT company that produces a suite of web applications to deliver knowledgebase and revenue management tools to hospitals throughout the United States. The applications prevent the potential loss of millions of dollars in revenue for the customer, and the goal for redesigning the applications is to maintain the company's position as market leader by delivering the best solutions to the customer.

The user experience of the previous product designs was impacting the company's ability to remain competitive, so I was hired to manage the redesign of four flagship applications. The key challenge was to develop and validate a design strategy that would push the company to develop Web 2.0 based applications, employing client-side Javascript and AJAX to deliver a rich data-driven user experience with a design that looked and behaved like a Microsoft Office application.

Instrumental to achieving success was my ability to prototype and test critical design concepts, translate undocumented product requirements into actionable design specs and consult on the appropriate application of Web 2.0 technologies.

Information Architecture, Information Design, Interaction Design, Visual Design, Usability Research

The previous product design forced the user to search and mine for information across fourteen separate pages. The target user was accustomed to viewing lots of information using Microsoft Excel; in fact, they demanded that more information be displayed on a single page.

I developed an innovative interaction design concept that enables the user to view all fourteen pages of information on a single page and provides the user with a means of controlling the information display in order to compare information and generate custom reports – a common user goal.

I could not just document the concept and expect to gain support from the business, so I developed an interactive prototype to walk them through the design in order to sell the user benefits of the concept and promote new opportunities to strengthen the brand by employing Web 2.0 technologies in the products.

View the design concept prototype.

The company was unique in that product management and engineering resources were working in multiple remote locations. Storyboards were an effective means of communicating proposed workflows and interaction designs. I produced special Visio stencils to quickly produce comps of the product design and illustrate details of the design in the storyboard. In some cases, storyboards provided enough detail to function as the spec for final coding.

Storyboards were saved as web pages and were accessible by team members, irrespective of their location.

View an example storyboard.
Note: View with an IE browser.

The previous product design was literally a page-turner – almost every mouse click required a server connection that resulted in reloading the page or displaying a new page.

The new design delivers a rich user experience using familiar desktop application functionality along with innovative information design solutions. The result was the redesign of a suite of four separate applications that now operate seamlessly together. This product design is one of the most progressive web application I have designed - the culmination of my desktop design and Web 2.0 design experience brought together to achieve success and exceed expectations of the customer and the business.

"I did a presentation of the product for the Coding and Data Integrity Team. They LOVED it!!!! There were many oohs and ahs, particularly over things like the tabs and accordions and the ability to compare two codes side-by-side. They love being able to search multiple sources at the same time. Their first impression was that the new version should be fairly easy for current users to transition to - it feels familiar and comfortable."
Patti Cousins, Accuro Product Manager

My product vision is responsible for securing the largest contract in the company's history, assisting the company with maintaining its lead in the market.