OVERVIEW
Providence Health serves millions of patients across regions, yet its digital care experience had become fragmented across marketing sites, third-party tools, and manual workflows. Patients were required to rely heavily on Epic MyChart for core healthcare tasks, which many found confusing and disconnected from Providence’s broader digital ecosystem. I led the strategy and design of Providence’s first centralized patient dashboard to establish a first-party digital front door for care.
MYROLE
I served as Lead UX Designer, responsible for defining the dashboard vision, UX strategy, information architecture, and interaction design from concept through launch. I partnered closely with clinical, legal, engineering, and vendor teams to align patient needs with regulatory and platform constraints. I also established reusable patterns to ensure the experience could scale across regions and initiatives.
THEPROBLEM
Patients struggled to complete basic healthcare tasks such as viewing test results, messaging providers, managing appointments, and understanding bills without calling support. These workflows were scattered across systems and varied by region, increasing patient anxiety and operational burden. Leadership needed a compliant, scalable dashboard that could unify these experiences while integrating with Epic and MyChart.
THEGOAL
Design a centralized, patient-first dashboard that reduces friction, increases self-service, and establishes a scalable foundation for future care experiences. The solution needed to balance clarity and reassurance for patients with clinical, legal, and technical constraints. Success depended on earning patient trust while working within third-party platform limitations.
APPROACH
I structured the work around research synthesis, experience strategy, modular design, and system integration. Rather than treating the dashboard as a feature container, I framed it as a task-first experience grounded in patient intent. Tradeoffs around scope, information density, and platform constraints were made explicitly and revisited throughout the project.
RESEARCH&STRATEGY
I synthesized patient research, support call data, and stakeholder interviews to identify the highest-friction patient tasks. Insights showed patients prioritized reassurance, status clarity, and clear next steps over feature breadth. Based on this, I reframed the dashboard from a dense feature hub into a focused task surface optimized for speed, clarity, and confidence.
KEYTRADEOFF
Stakeholders initially pushed for an all-in-one dashboard exposing every available feature. I advocated for prioritizing a small set of high-frequency actions, accepting reduced feature visibility in favor of lower cognitive load and faster task completion. This decision traded breadth for trust and usability, particularly for patients under stress.
UXDESIGN
I designed a modular dashboard centered on core patient actions such as viewing results, messaging care teams, managing appointments, and paying bills. Information hierarchy emphasized clarity and status visibility over density.
I worked closely with front-end engineers to ensure task prioritization, layout hierarchy, and interaction states translated cleanly into production.
SYSTEMS&SCALE
Reusable, accessibility-compliant patterns were introduced to support consistent experiences across regions. These patterns were designed with both UX consistency and front-end maintainability in mind, enabling the dashboard to scale without fragmentation.
CHALLENGES
API limitations, legal constraints, and vendor dependencies restricted access to certain features needed for a fully comprehensive dashboard. As a result, the project shifted from an expansive vision to an MVP focused on a limited set of high-impact tasks, designed to deliver immediate value while leaving room for future expansion.
IMPLEMENTATION
The dashboard launched as Providence Health’s primary digital entry point for patients. The MVP approach enabled faster delivery while parallel efforts continued to unlock additional integrations. Governance and documentation ensured future teams could expand the experience without eroding usability or consistency.
IMPACT
The dashboard consolidated previously fragmented workflows into a single, trusted experience. Patients were able to complete common tasks independently, reducing reliance on call centers, chat support, and in-person assistance. The experience established a durable UX foundation that later expanded across billing, mobile, and virtual care.
BUSINESS&USEROUTCOMES
Self-service adoption increased as patients gained a clearer and more predictable way to manage care digitally. Operational teams benefited from reduced support volume for routine tasks. The dashboard standardized the patient entry experience across regions while remaining flexible enough to evolve.
REFLECTION
Nathan Gordon
TM
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