zocdoc provider dashboard & business model flip
Zocdoc is a healthcare company that allows patients to discover and book with doctors online, and helps doctors grow their business.
I was the lead IC designer on all things related to one of the biggest projects in our company's history: transforming our business model for massive scale. A central challenge crucial to success of this flip from a subscription to variable revenue model was figuring out a way to convey to doctors the value Zocdoc provides to their practice - an ambiguous concept we'd never attempted in our UI before.
After significant discovery work, iteration and validation, we shipped to all doctors in America a new provider dashboard that puts doctors' performance front and center; a new budgeting system; and a new provider design system (see breakdown in next section).
Managed by Q &
a Product Transformation
Managed by Q is the first platform designed for workplace teams, to keep the office space running smoothly. It's used by many prominent companies like AngelList, Slack, and Netflix.
Between handling vendors, managing employee needs, and stocking snacks, Office Managers are critical to a productive workspace. But they're also among the most overlooked and underserved. Unlike designers (Figma) or Sales (Salesforce), Office Managers lack a tool specifically designed to help them work better. Instead they're unsupported technologically and hacking together their own inefficient solutions.
Solution
At Managed by Q, we created the first ever software platform for office management. Over 10 months, we transformed our software product from primarily an employee-ticketing tool to a broad platform addressing unique problems of Office Managers.
I led end-to-end design for all 5 new product areas. We started with just one.
I led design for all
5 new product areas
Click the arrows or thumbnails below for a sampling of the tools we built for Office Managers.
The team
Over the course of expanding into 5 new product areas, I partnered extensively with PM and Engineering leadership to identify, prioritize, and execute on the problem spaces & features, and worked with many PMs, engineers, PMMs, and Account Managers.
For each product area above, I worked with a pod of 1 PM, Eng lead, and 4-5 Engineers. I also worked with our Systems designer and Mobile designer for visual and iOS guidance, respectively.
Timeline
~10 months
Process
1) Foundational Product Principles
Rapidly adding core features to a product risk it becoming quickly fragmented. To make sure that the product stayed cohesive and that we were building the right things for our customers, I partnered with PM and Engineering leadership to align on 2 product principles that would underpin all future product development.
Simple over Comprehensive
Focus on what actually matter to small-to-mid
size business, in a way that communicates
emotion and understanding
Guide on the Side
Office Managers are often a team of one and lack support. Through guidance, let's help them gain confidence they can excel in their jobs.
2) Case study: Designing Inventory Management
Let's take a look behind the design process for one of the product areas, and how revisiting these product principles helped us question our initial assumptions, simplify, and pivot towards a successful outcome.
Understanding the problem space
We quickly got a sense of the existing problems around managing office inventory - notably that current manual methods (like taking stock on Excel sheets, pen and paper) are inefficient, time-consuming, and quickly out-of-date.
Shadowing 5 Office Managers helped us better understand the physical environment we'd be designing for (a supply closet), and real-world interactions, like the handoff between the person who takes stock and does reordering
Our initial hypothesis
Initially, we assumed we'd add the most value by directly mapping each step of the workflow to mobile:
1. Taking stock
2. Reordering
3. Adding reordered items to the count.
A digital experience for each step would be more dynamic and collaborative, and streamline the process.
But something wasn't working...
As we showed customers many conceptual iterations, something didn't resonate. There were too many numbers to input and track - the amount in stock, the amount to reorder, the target - and Office Managers were confused.
This is where we paused and took a step back.
Guidance from our founding principles
I think a good design principle should be opinionated enough to provide explicit direction when the solution isn't clear. So we decided to look at that flow chart again through the lens of one of our design principles:
Simple over Comprehensive
Focus on what actually matters to small-to-mid
size business, in a way that communicates
emotion and understanding
Re-evaluating our flow chart through this lens, we quickly realized we were essentially trying to do too much: bring all the robustness - and complexity - of traditional inventory management to an app for small businesses.
As we'll see, it turned out there’s only one thing that really matters for this size office: the reorder experience.
Focus only on the reorder experience
We learned that even though office managers count the "amount in stock" per item, they end up just eyeballing a few items they need to reorder that week. Reorder amounts vary a lot week-by-week based on employee demand. It's a lot less structured than an enterprise company.
The "amount in stock" didn't really matter - they'd just throw the paper away. We removed the concept entirely.
An office manager eyeballing a few items to reorder
Final designs
I spent the next few weeks iterating and refining the visual and interaction designs. The final solution was a connected experience across mobile and web.
Reorder lists are front and center. Office Managers can quickly eyeball and add the items they need, and track pricing and vendors
Office Managers can view price, vendors, and analytics to inform their purchasing decisions.
Web had a more robust way to add inventory items en masse, and view analytics
Outcome
Our transition to a broad software platform over the last 10 months was very positively received by customers. We saw Office Managers from companies like theSkimm, AngelList, and Slack switch their workflows to the new tools and use them frequently. There was no hesitation in leaving behind the outdated, manual methods they’d be using for years.
We set the foundation for each of these new verticals, but launching is just the start. We are continuing to learn how customers are using them and where we can add value. We do this through:
-
Biweekly rolling user research sessions - qualitative follow ups on overall satisfaction and needs
-
Daily "film studies" - a forum across 5 cross-functional disciplines for Customer Experience, Account Managers, and Sales to share customer insights, requests, and problems directly to Product and Design
-
Dashboard monitoring - metrics on usage, user-generated content type, retention
-
"Impersonating" clients - An internal, limited mode to preview client dashboards. This gave us signal on day-to-day habits and usage, and general qualitative themes or shortcomings
Before expanding into additional product areas, we are focused on ensuring we’ve solved the core problems for these product areas completely.