How I Leveraged User Feedback to Redesign a Healthcare Dashboard

🎯 OVERVIEW

As a Senior UX Designer with over a decade of healthcare experience, I led a cross-functional team with minimal guidance to redesign a complex healthcare administration dashboard that served as the platform’s home screen—a critical hub for user communications and task management.

Timeframe: April–October 2020

👥THE CHALLENGE

• Low engagement: Users rarely interacted with alerts and communications.
• One-size-fits-all experience: Users couldn’t tailor the dashboard to their needs.
• Unhelpful notifications: Outages and support channels were confusing and ineffective.

Design a flexible, relevant, and user-personalized dashboard that streamlines communication and enhances productivity.

Insight-Driven Approach

🔍 USER-LED DISCOVERY

I conducted 30-minute remote interviews with administrators at large healthcare organizations and systems (>50 users) and unearthed the following pain points:

• Information overload
• Rigid interfaces
• Wasted time adjusting to new UI elements

📌 UNDERSTANDING USERS

Key persona: IT-savvy admins in multi-provider clinics tasked with monitoring alerts, managing tasks, and reducing inefficiencies.

Collaborative Discovery

I facilitated stakeholder workshops to align on goals

• Actionable alerts
• Configurable user experience
• Task-focused views
• Robust support systems

I then built an affinity diagram and an inspiration catalog using Miro, identifying features like the ability to silence irrelevant alerts and AI-driven support.

✏️ SKETCHING & VALIDATION

1. Low-fidelity sketches: Rapid paper wireframes within the existing IA to minimize disruption.
2. Early user feedback: Iterative sessions validated comfort with layout changes—users wanted familiarity.
3. Hi-fi mockups: Transitioned to Figma, featuring customizable modules, filterable alerts, and role-based task lists.

View Prototype (Figma)

Usability Testing

🧪 TESTING STRATEGY

• Moderated testing: 30+ sessions with diverse healthcare admins.
• Unmoderated testing: Hotjar tasks + Gainsight surveys delivered remote user insights.
• Beta pilot: Rolled out to a small group; measured success through key stakeholder KPIs.

✅ RESULTS

• 6% negative feedback in beta—solid validation of the redesign.
• Users appreciated custom alert filters, context-aware tips, and personalized dashboards.
• Beta metrics showed increased task completion and improved alert engagement.

Learnings

🔍 INSIGHTS

• Change aversion is strong: Users resist moving elements. Pre-launch guides and tooltips eased the shift.
• Defaults are powerful: Despite configurability, 90% left settings unchanged. Choosing the right defaults is crucial.
• Personalization vs. Performance: Custom features come at cost. We balanced flexibility with efficiency by limiting active modules and optimizing data queries.

🧭 NEXT STEPS

• Scale pilot success across client base with iterative feedback cycles.
• Audit and refine default layouts based on usage patterns.
• Highlight the trade-off: personalization costs vs. productivity gains.

💬 TAKEAWAY

Complex healthcare workflows demand thoughtful UX with user-first defaults and gradual personalization. Ultimately, successful design isn’t just about flexibility—it’s about smart choices that serve both users and systems.

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