Healthcare UX · Ethnographic Research
Global Healthcare: Optimizing Surgical Workflows
Designing a digital ordering platform that works with surgical nurses' demanding reality, not against it.
Designing a digital ordering platform that works with surgical nurses' demanding reality, not against it.
Surgical nurses relied on a slow, manual process of paper catalogs and phone calls to order critical equipment. This system was prone to errors, consumed valuable staff time, and lacked order transparency.
Putting strain on hospital operations at scale across 50+ global facilities.
My role was to immerse myself in the hospital environment to uncover the specific needs of the nursing staff. I was responsible for conducting the research, analyzing findings, and translating them into a design concept for a new digital ordering platform.
I conducted ethnographic research across multiple hospital sites, observing surgical nurses in their natural work environment. Through contextual interviews and workflow mapping, I documented their end-to-end ordering process, uncovering pain points that traditional research methods would miss.
I transformed raw research data into "The Overburdened Nurse" persona — a research-backed archetype that captured key user motivations, frustrations, and goals. This persona became our team's shared reference point for all design decisions.
Using persona insights, I designed low-fidelity wireframes focused on mobile-first interactions. Key features included one-tap reordering for frequently purchased items and a transparent order tracking system. Remote testing showed overwhelmingly positive responses to these "nurse world" features.
My research insights and foundational workflow design directly informed the core feature set of the digital platform MVP. The platform successfully launched globally across the healthcare company's hospital network.