PQCNC

Product Overhaul for Usability and Scalability

PQCNC application home screen

THE CHALLENGE 

Rebuild a custom platform serving all hospitals in North Carolina, focusing on scaling, stabilizing, and creating a better user experience for PQCNC staff and hospital administrators to improve reporting on statewide health initiatives.

THE APPROACH 

Replatform the website code to leverage contemporary software frameworks, create a custom API to enhance efficiency and elegance, and redesign the admin interface to be more usable and aesthetically pleasing.

THE RESULTS 

An overhaul of improvements brought to life — from an enhanced user interface and dashboard experience to a sustainable, flexible technical platform that drastically improves the daily activities of hospital staff and administrators.

The user experience

Difficult user experiences in healthcare technology is an unfortunate, common reality. At first glance, core features of the DELPHI tool were obscured by cumbersome and hard-to-use forms, fields, and tables given the decade-old technology.

After a focused UX audit, we decided to propagate a few key changes throughout the tool. We drastically improved usability by clearly defining form styling, and introducing breadcrumbs, selection chips, and proper accessibility affordances.

PQCNQ data table
Tasks like data import/export and analysis were often blocked by long loading times.

Back-end efficiencies

PQCNC’s DELPHI tool is widely-used in health facilities across North Carolina, and predictably collects substantial data. However, the highly-customized, decade-old Drupal 7 platform was no longer capable of performing at the level required for their expanded needs and the experience suffered, adversely affecting overall performance. The sheer size and complexity made even simple queries and software updates cumbersome and unnecessarily expensive.

Using Symfony and custom API endpoints, we abstracted the data into a standalone framework that not only dramatically improves the tool’s performance, but also provides future-proof, flexible access to the core data. Third-party apps, like Tableau, may now easily interface with the data that is core to their researchers’ needs. 

No longer trapped in decade’s old software, the DELPHI data now exists in a comprehensible,scalable state, well-equipped to support current and future PQCNC initiatives.

 

PQCNC's old data structure
PQCNC new data structure

Visual overhaul

A visual design aesthetic can make or break the usability of a user interface. Using the recommendations of our earlier UX audit as a base, we produced a holistic redesign of the DELPHI tool.

In addition to redesigning for usability, we found opportunities throughout the interface to build in surprise-and-delight moments; elements such as the PQCNC brand colors, a subtle repeating pattern, and reinforcement of a dashboard feel with a vertical navigation. The end result is an attractive and extremely usable interface that stands out among healthcare applications.

PQCNC application dashboard
PQCNC dashboard login
PQCNC reports

I like everything about it.

Keith Cochran / PQCNC

Beautiful code and design.

Whether you’re building a prototype or overhauling legacy product technology — we’re here to bring both engineering and creative chops to the table.