| Client | Skills | Project Dates | What is | URL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
HHS/HealthIT.gov | UX/UI Design | May 15, 2023 → July 5, 2023 | What is HealthIT.gov’s USCDI+ Portal? USCDI+ is a service provided to federal and industry partners to establish, harmonize, and advance the use of interoperable health data element lists that extend beyond the core data in the USCDI (United States Core Data for Interoperability) in order to meet specific programmatic and/or use case requirements. |
“The team's dedication to understanding our vision and implementing it flawlessly, and the end result exceeded our expectations.”
- Liane Christopher, Director of Delivery, upon winning Sky Solutions’s ACES Award for our project’s work (December 2023)!
Upgrading HealthIT.gov’s USCDI+ Submission Site
One of my projects at Sky Solutions involved prototyping a new design solution for HealthIT.gov’s USCDI+ submission website, using ServiceNow as the base low-code tool to harmonize and better synchronize submissions, requests, and approved changes.
Liane Christopher, Director of Delivery at Sky Solutions, brought me onto her team of 5-6 ServiceNow Developers to help create and refine prototypes that would visualize what a more efficient and streamlined experience would look like as we worked to build the new site for dataset submissions.
Challenges
To customize the look, feel, and user experience of HealthIT.gov’s USCDI+ Data Submission Site.
Design Process
Since I was creating an online portal, I based my design process on the Design Thinking approach and followed the below process:
- Discovery
- Iteration
- Implementation
- Solution
Conducting a UX/UI Audit of the Current USCDI+ Submission Site (Discovery)
The USCDI+ site had a more cluttered layout, with importance on submitting new information, archiving older documents/versions of the USCDI+, listing all datasets and information (making the site’s design very information heavy), AND providing user comments…all on one main page.
(…after scrolling quite a bit later…)
The most recent comments from users/submitters are placed underneath all the datasets and in a narrow column, paginated layout, making user comments on submissions important, but tucked away underneath all dataset categories…
Submitting new data and edits to USCDI+ documentation for publication had users read through a static submission process page (USCDI+ Submission Page).
The form to submit or edit new submissions (USCDI+ Submission Form) asked for users to know information and didn’t provide definitions or info users might find useful to know while filling out the form, and had quite a few steps to complete before completing the submission.
The page to view submissions (USCDI+ Submission Confirmation Page, cropped) mimics the page design listing ALL the details of specific datasets and other information (which turn out to be very long pages).
How Will ServiceNow’s Offerings Improve the USCDI+ User Experience? (Discovery)
ServiceNow provides a variety of low code technical solutions, yet in our customizing their Employee Center and Knowledge Base for USCDI+, we envisioned a platform that would
- Condense and prioritize dataset and category information
- Streamline USCDI+ the submissions and edits form and receive feedback for all USCDI+ domains
- Provide user roles (Admin, User, etc) to enable people in charge to read feedback and control how submitted submissions and edits are added to the US Core Data of Interoperability
Designing Features with ServiceNow’s OOTB (Out of the Box) Widgets and Layouts (Iteration)
In a Sandbox environment, I put together the basic building blocks ServiceNow offers in their Employee Center (which our team was building for the new USCDI+ platform.
A collection of ServiceNow Out of the Box (OOTB) Widgets, including Catalog Content, Icon Links, News, and Simple Lists used to build my ServiceNow Sandbox:
Weaving in ONC/HealthIT.gov Branding Guidelines (Implementation)
Thanks to our working with some members of the HealthIT.gov team, we were able to attain some branding guides to customize the prototypes I was creating for the development team at Sky Solutions, enabling a quick turnaround on the project.
Crafting New High Fidelity Prototypes (Solutions)
After experimenting around in my own ServiceNow Sandbox and having USCDI’s branding materials as a reference, I hit the ground running in creating prototypes to visualize solutions for the Submission Site.
The USCDI+ Submission/Edit forms designs were also refined, with one version featuring a table for Associated Project URLs
Another version of the main USCDI+ page design, where features are swapped and a few are added (such as a Search bar added on the top right).
What Were the Results of Our Work? (Solution)
Work on the USCDI+ project lasted from May to July 2023 and the platform built was tweaked in Fall 2023 and was released to the public in December 2023.
The current USCDI+ page is designed in the same way as the second version of the prototype, with only the comments moved below the USCDI+ Domains widget.
Click the link below to visit the new USCDI+ Submission Site platform:
