Project: UptoDate Continuing Medical Education (CME) Redesign
Summary: CME was a small but essential piece of the core UpToDate app. Since UpToDate was an accredited provider of CME, users accrued credits by reading topics. Once redeemed within the UpToDate system, credits could be submitted for things like state medical license renewal, reappointment at hospitals and insurance. Redesign was sorely needed — the code was over a decade old (and, unlike most of the app, non-responsive), the interface was clunky, and performance issues were increasing. CME also did not exist on mobile. Our goals for overhauling this piece of the app were simple: make things faster, easier to use, and available on all platforms. The redesign resulted in a dramatically streamlined workflow, a total rewrite for desktop code, new mobile web access, and improved performance due to responsified code and a database redesign.
My Responsibilities: Research, Information Architecture, User Testing, Wireframes, Mockups, Development Liaison and UX QA during the build phase
Worked With: Editorial Staff (internal), Accreditation Boards (external), Product Manager, Web Development team, Platform Development team, QA
Initial work for sizing involved lots of discussion with stakeholders to identify and clarify the (many) problems within the workflow that had been in place for over a decade. Since this was a project that was long in coming, almost everyone already had ideas how to fix CME, and a challenge early on was diplomatically combating rampant solutionizing (which almost always railroaded user needs). The PM and I did an initial starter round of user testing to observe clinicians moving through the workflow and to record their frustrations and feedback. There was also a lot of preliminary back and forth with Development about performance improvements and technical limitations. After this intense initial period of R&D, I made structural suggestions and presented a redesigned workflow.
Comparison of the old workflow vs. redesigned workflow:
I was able to productively cut the workflow by half. We considered an option that would have streamlined things even further, but ultimately there was consensus that taking things too minimal would result in unnecessary user confusion.
After wireframes were solidified and approved by stakeholders, I built a testing prototype in Axure and we did several rounds of user tests with in-house physicians. Final mockups resulted, and we successfully build out the first phase of a new and improved CME system.
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