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The San Francisco Department of Public Health is responsible for protecting and promoting the health of all San Franciscans. As part of this mission, the department's Communicable Disease Control Unit (CDCU) must effectively manage infectious disease outbreaks and other public health emergencies in San Francisco.
To help investigators monitor and manage disease outbreaks, the CDCU developed a powerful Integrated Case and Outbreak Management System. Unfortunately, the new system was confusing, so the CDCU turned to Cooper for guidance.
Now, here was a challenge: In three weeks, design and specify a user-centered interaction framework that could be built by a developer using Visual Basic, and would be a mission-critical tool once launched. The design, moreover, would have to mirror the working patterns of disease-control investigators, while providing an easy-to-use, seamless system for documenting, managing, and reporting public health issues.
In the alpha release of the tool, opening a new infectious disease case was so cumbersome that investigators wrote paper notes, which they later transcribed into the system. Investigators also had to look for common actions under pull-down menus and hunt down related information by drilling through multiple screens. The main mission for Cooper, then, was to put the most critical information and actions right at the fingertips of investigators:
- Common actions are available in a persistent toolbar, and context-dependent action buttons appear on each screen
- Dashboards provide a clear view of investigators' individual caseloads and direct access to their records
- A tool provides context and quick navigation to screens critical to investigators working a case
This sketch of the new Dashboard shows how disease control investigators have a clear view of the outbreaks, cases, patients, and contacts requiring attention
To integrate data entry into the natural workflow, Cooper designed specialized screens that combine key elements on a single page. To further reduce data entry effort, Cooper's design framework leverages existing data wherever possible. Disease control investigators can select common addresses and action-log notes from a pull-down list, and automatically populate a new case with relevant data from a related case.
This sketch of the New Case screen places all critical information for opening a new case on a single page, making it possible for investigators to capture data directly in the system when a report call comes in
The ease of keeping case information up-to-date allows disease control investigators to spend more time monitoring, controlling, and studying outbreaks and less time doing data entry. Bringing related information together and highlighting connections between people and places helps investigators understand and manage complex situations.
The CDCU's developer was confident that Cooper's work would help him to release the right design the first time.