Emergent Records Management System

Building a Records Management System (RMS) so that Battalion Chiefs, Data Analysts, QA and Billing Departments could access critical data.

Role: Lead UX Designer

Team: Jonathan Bron (Senior Product Manager, Experience), Louis Byers (Director of Engineering), Jayna Bergerson (Senior UX Designer), Amy Myers (Senior UI Designer)

My Contribution: UX Research, UX Design

Employer: Emergent Public Safety Software

Skills: Collaboration, Interviews, Workflow Diagrams, Service Blueprint

Tools: FigJam

Timeline: Five months

User Problem

Emergent’s iOS mobile app would send critical patient information, collected on-scene by first responders, to a proprietary desktop platform. It then went to a separate, third-party back end, to be submitted to state and federal agencies. Once the data reached that point, it disappeared from the desktop app, becoming difficult for the users—including fire department Battalion Chiefs, data analysts and billing departments—to access. This was a problem because the user needed the data to conduct their own QA to understand whether procedures were effective, response times were improving, and to track insurance payments.

Goal

Build a RMS (Record Management System) to display and edit iOS data in the web portal, have the data be retrievable by multiple users, and submit to state and federal agencies while complying with NEMSIS and HIPAA standards.

Process

Develop timeline
Conduct Discovery
Validate with users

Develop timeline
As the lead designer, I met with the Senior Product Manager and the Director of Engineering to plan this highly ambitious task. My job was to represent the design team and ensure that we had time for adequate research, discovery, revisions, and of course, unforeseen surprises. Our original timeline was 9 months. Because leadership needed to have a saleable product by a critical May conference, they told us to make it 5.

2. Conduct Discovery

Thankfully, we had easy access to the critical users of the RMS: Firefighters, EMS personnel, Chiefs, Data Analysts, and Admins. I conducted interviews with each user group and compiled the data to see where patterns were emerging. I created a Service Blueprint to determine the MVP solution and guide the development process, ensuring that we were building a solid foundation that we could enhance with future functionality.

What are you looking for when you log into your RMS?

Who needs to get their work done before you can do yours?

What is your biggest frustration with your current RMS?

Whiteboard from an early in-person working session, and the start of a workflow diagram.

Service Blueprint that I validated with users to make sure we were building a solid foundation for our MVP solution.

3. Validate with users

I validated my work with stakeholders during our monthly Advisory Board meetings. Any changes were incorporated into the service blueprint and shared with our internal team, since I continued to meet weekly with Engineering and Project Management to give updates and meet our tight deadline.
At the same time, I was also managing the design team to coordinate the massive data needs for NERIS and NEMSIS, and reviewing UI designs. The biggest surprise was when we discovered a half-finished front end design- when we learned it was salvageable, we utilized that to save time and make our deadline.

Early layout of the desktop front end that was resurrected to make our agressive timeline.

Results

Ultimately, we decided to focus on the data input from the firefighter for MVP. We met our May 1 deadline and delivered the critical NEMSIS-compliant functionality that allowed the sales team to secure 3 additional customers, generate interest at a critical conference, and achieve $275,000 in sales in the first few months.

“Caitlyn consistently conducts thorough research to understand how the end users of a product interact with it, and to uncover the root causes of their pain points. She brings those insights back to the team, sharing context, stories, and concrete examples that deepen our collective understanding of the domain.”

— Louis Byers, Director of Engineering

I jumped in with the Station 67 crew at Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue to gather invaluable field exprience during a ride along.

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