Situation
CultureGuide, SameSky Health’s (acquired by GroundGame Health) culturally intelligent engagement solution, empowers health plans to connect members to services regardless of cultural background. The platform had been migrated to Salesforce and built before a Product Design team existed. After launch, Community Health Guides (CHGs) using the platform experienced significant usability challenges. The clinical operations team requested design review and optimization recommendations. Initial heuristic evaluation revealed sorting/filtering failures, inconsistent information updating, component duplication, and naming conventions that didn’t match real-world usage.
Task
ROLE: Researcher & Designer
RESPONSIBILITIES: User Research, Salesforce redesign
COLLABORATORS: Content Strategy, Culture Guide team, Engineering, VP of Clinical Operations
I served as researcher and designer to understand the current CHG team experience using CultureGuide and make design recommendations to optimize the Salesforce platform. My role required coordinating with clinical operations for user access, aligning with engineering on technical constraints, and delivering actionable design improvements for the culturally sensitive healthcare communication platform.
Duplicate components with the same functionality
Action
Comprehensive Heuristic Evaluation: Conducted systematic UX evaluation since CultureGuide had never been reviewed for best practices. Identified critical issues including non-standard sorting/filtering, inconsistent naming conventions, duplicated components, and lack of consistency around information updating.
In-Depth User Research: Interviewed 9 Community Health Guides (primary platform users) plus stakeholder discussions with clinical operations and CHG managers. Used Dovetail for synthesis and analysis, discovering that many features were unused, filtering for member cases was difficult, and there was heavy reliance on external applications like Google Docs for call scripts and SMS content.
Design being used by CHGs before the redesign
Iterative Design Process: Created initial rough designs based on research findings to align clinical operations and product teams on direction. Refined designs using Lightning System plugin (Salesforce design system) to accelerate development.
Usability Testing & Validation: Created prototypes with a focus on making important information prominent while eliminating unused features. Conducted usability testing with the same CHGs interviewed initially. Received positive feedback on consolidating information to single screens, progressive disclosure implementation, improved member verification placement, and enhanced SMS message selection capabilities. Views were customized to the job to be done - Call or SMS.
Updated design for calls
Updated design for SMS
Results
“I Wish I Was Working On This Right Now”
The platform redesign successfully consolidated member information into single-screen workflows and implemented progressive disclosure for optimal information display. The creation of a single-screen workflow eliminating multi-step navigation with:
Progressive disclosure design improving information hierarchy
Salesforce platform optimization using Lightning System components
This led to a reduction in external application dependency through integrated scripting, cultural intelligence enhancement for diverse member populations, and positive user validation.
