Ask Terri - Search Engine
UX/UI | Medical Software | APX Systems
UX/UI | Medical Software | APX Systems
The APX Platform is a cloud-based business intelligence, training, educational and data analytics solution for aesthetic practices. The easy-to-use APX Platform optimizes employee productivity and increases practice profitability through training, analytics, and community. APX Training offers on-demand Sales, Finance, & Operations virtual curriculum customized for each staff role. Currently, when a user has a question, they reach out directly to the APX support team. This, ultimately, results in the support team getting hundreds of tickets a day, slowing them down in responding to higher priority issues.
How can we design a tool that will grant APX the ability to educate themselves about the plastic surgery industry.
Create a tool that will allow APX users to quickly educate themselves, ultimately, relieving the help center.
My only point of contact through out this project with the APX project manager. While she was a beneficial resource when designing Ask Terri, I acknowledge getting a developer's or designer's perspective would have helped shaped the initial designs. I also didn't have access to the APX platform. This stunted my ability to understand fully what solutions were currently being implemented and what patterns the user expected to see within this feature.
This project was scoped five hours to complete, leaving me to forgo preliminary user interviews. However, I believed it was imperative to do some light user research in order to have a deeper understanding of who would be using this feature and design accordingly. Through user personas, a user journey maps, and writing out user stories, I was better able to get into the shoes of a plastic surgeon.
At first, I wasn't entirely sure at what the capabilities of APX engineer team were so I designed several low-fi iterations to discuss with the product manager and align on scope. the first lo-fi version had all the bells and whistles (video tutorials, linked out articles, related questions...etc), the other version simply had quick answers to the users questions and related questions.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the APX engineer team WAS capable of building out the version with all of the features - my next steps would be to create the hi-fidelity version and present it to the APX team.
My only point of contact with APX Platform with the product manager that assigned this project to me. Unfortunately I didn't have access to any of the APX developers or other designers. Once I created the wireframes, I wanted to get a better directional sense from the PM before I started iterating in high fidelity. This conversation was extremely beneficial to the design of this project. I learn about key features of the APX platform I didn't have access to, business developments, and important insights into the user's expectations with the software.
My next step was to build out the lo-fidelity wireframes using the APX design system. I dedicated about 30 combing through their software, learning their systems and design patterns, before apply it to the next iteration of Ask Terri.
Below are a few screen shots of me walking through the user flow of this version that I sent over to the product team. I felt that sending over a loom explaining my design reasoning, along with a prototype was the most efficient way to move forward with this project to stay within scope.
Once I received the green light from the product team, I packed the file up for the engineer team. This process included designing for every use case and writing out notes as to make it clear on how the product should respond in certain situations.
While I was up for the challenge to design within the five hours granted to me - this wasn't how I would have exactly gone about this project. But that's the beauty of working with individual clients, I get to adapt and evolve as a designer by meeting my clients needs. If I lived in a picture perfect world where money and time weren't an issue, I would have changed several things about this process.
First, I would have started out by conducting user interviews. Talking to with two to three plastic surgeons and APX users to deeply understand their relationship with this platform would have been ideal when it came to understanding the end user, knowing their pain-points, likes and dislikes.
Finally, I would have liked to put this feature through several usability tests, tasking users with scenarios and seeing their thought process on how to solve through usability think-alouds. I believe it's important for myself, as the designer, to pull myself out of the design once it's at this stage and get fresh eyes and perspectives in-front of it. It's important to acknowledge that I'm capable of missing use cases and perspectives, and this round of user testing enables me to elevate the design.
