I was brought on as Creative Director at Nightingale to lead the front-end redesign of their Electronic Health Record application. I created all the initial prototypes and design patterns for the application, based on user feedback that we recorded from Design Committee sessions with Doctors, Nurses, Front-Office Staff and Billers.
Work Queues
One of the design patterns that received very positive feedback from our users is the Work Queue.
Problem to Solve
For each staff member in a medical clinic, there are time-sensitive tasks and reports that need to be taken care of on a daily basis.
We knew from meeting with our Design Committees, composed of Doctors, Nurses, Front-Office Staff and Billers, what types of tasks each user type needed to complete. These tasks are usually handled between visits or whenever the user has a few minutes to spare. Based on the feedback we analyzed what was common to all tasks and what elements the user needs to complete each task.
Requirements
The high-level requirements for Work Queues were:
- Be alerted that a new task or report exists.
- Are any tasks urgent or overdue?
- Filter or sort their work queue, so they can work on the tasks they choose.
- Give them the information they need to complete the task and automatically get it off their work queue.
- Let them know how many tasks remain to be completed.
And we needed to do all this without interfering too much with the main flow of the system.
Solution
The solution I came up with is shown on the screens below.
Doctor’s Dashboard
Highlighting Task Types
Task Type Selected and Task List Slides Out
Task Selected
Task Details Slide in from the Right
Task List tucks in to the left but remains accessible
Tasks Counter and Navigation Highlighted
The basic flow is:
- From their dashboard, under “Needs action:”, the user selects a type of task they want to work on.
- A panel slides out showing a list of tasks.
- The user selects a task.
- The first task details slide in from the right, while the task list panel gets tucked away on the left, but is still accessible.
- The user is provided all the information and actions they require to complete the particular task.
- When they complete the task (in this case by clicking Sign), the next task automatically slides in and the task counter in the top right is updated with number of tasks left to complete for this work queue.
- The user can also skip tasks by using the right arrow in the top right navigation, or opening the panel from the left and selecting a new task.
- When the user is done working the tasks, he or she clicks the Back button to return to their dashboard.
Reception
When we tested it with users, they were able to successfully navigate and complete their tasks. They particularly liked that all the information they needed was presented in one place so they didn’t have to go hunting for it. And they also liked the task counter automatically updating, and tasks lists disappearing, giving them a sense of accomplishment as they worked through their lists.
We were able to use this design pattern for all our work queues, even though the tasks for each user type varied considerably.