Case Study

Improving real-time operations oversight

tl;dr

I led the redesign of a standalone hospital housekeeping application for Elevra, bringing staffing, assignments, and shift progress into one workspace. The design separated operator availability from work progress and supported dispatch workflows across desktop, tablet, and mobile.

Research and Design 30 Days

Bringing hospital housekeeping into a shared operations platform

Hospital dispatchers coordinate staffing, assignments, and changing priorities throughout each shift. Compass Digital wanted to bring its standalone housekeeping application into Elevra. I led product definition and interaction design, preserving essential workflows while reorganizing the experience around dispatchers’ operational decisions.

Defining the relationships behind the screens

The existing application showed what users could do, but not enough about how they organized the work. In requirements workshops with Product, I mapped operators, shifts, tasks, duty lists, and facility structure to establish a shared model before designing layouts.

Requirements connect dispatcher needs, business goals, and operational constraints.

The conceptual model defines operators, shifts, tasks, locations, and work states.

That model clarified which concepts needed visibility and where the design had to accommodate uncertainty, including inaccurate task estimates and work continuing across shifts.

Operational model and risk analysis

Relationships between operators, shifts, tasks, and duty lists inform the product structure.

Risk modeling examines inaccurate task estimates and work that crosses shift boundaries.

Making availability and work progress distinct

I organized the Shift Board around the questions dispatchers needed to answer: who is available, what is in progress, and where attention is needed. The board connects overall shift activity with individual assignments, with filters and contextual actions for managing exceptions.

The Shift Board connects an overview of the shift with individual operators and assignments.

Filtering and cancellation

Status filters narrow the board to operators who need attention.

Cancellation supports one or multiple duty lists, with an impact review and recorded reason.

A key decision was to separate operator availability from work progress. I defined states and interaction rules so dispatchers could distinguish staffing capacity from task completion, without opening each record. I reviewed feasibility and behavior with Engineering and documented the rules for implementation.

Operator-card interaction specifications

Operator-card specifications define overflow, contextual actions, and information hierarchy.

Operator states distinguish availability from work progress.

Measuring progress against the work involved

Discharge cleaning, routine duties, and ad-hoc requests represent different kinds of work. I modeled shift progress using estimated task duration, giving dispatchers a signal of schedule pressure beyond a simple count of completed tasks.

Progress calculations use estimated task duration to indicate when work is falling behind.

Activity metrics bring workforce capacity, completion, and operator progress into one view.

Keeping dispatch workflows usable away from a desk

Dispatchers and supervisors also work throughout the facility. I adapted the board, shift selection, and duty-list reassignment for tablet and mobile while preserving the same operational concepts across devices.

Tablet and mobile layouts preserve the core dispatch workflows.

Mobile shift selection and reassignment

Mobile selection patterns break date and shift selection into manageable steps.

Mobile reassignment lets supervisors redistribute duty lists during a shift.

A unified workspace for managing the shift

The design brought workforce availability, assignments, and progress into a coherent Elevra workspace. Dispatchers could monitor the shift and act on changing conditions, while shared state definitions and interaction specifications gave Engineering a consistent model to implement.

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