The Essential CEU Institute is a continuing education training platform for healthcare professionals in California. As product designer, I shipped many new features and led the redesign of core platform functionality.

Background

Essential CEU started as a SaaS platform for healthcare professionals in California to subscribe and access a library of state-approved continuing education courses. Over four years, our team expanded Essential CEU into a “one-stop shop” for teams and individuals to manage all aspects of their training and continuing education. In that time, the platform issued 29,000+ course certificates to 3,100+ users, with 14,000+ certificates in 2020 alone.

Along the way, we added the ability for users to document training they (or their team) completed outside of our platform, which gave subscribers a reason to keep their membership longer. While technically straightforward, the change raised user experience issues that led us to redesign team and individual user profiles.

Capturing the Process

When planning a new feature with non-technical stakeholders, it can be difficult to establish shared forms of communication. To facilitate a productive conversation and align on requirements, I utilized a virtual white-boarding tool (Miro) and a process diagram which included:

• User Types
• High-Level Steps of the Process
• Specific User Actions (User Stories)

This helped us to move fast, gather the details we needed to get started on the feature, and confirm everything with stakeholders.

Translating for Software

A simple process diagram isn’t enough to prepare a feature for implementation by engineers. I created in-depth user flows to communicate the process and outline design elements for developers. Holding off on UI design at this stage streamlines the most important work and avoids the pitfalls of time spent crafting unnecessary high-fidelity mockups.

Minimum Viable Fidelity

A personal product design value I do my best to uphold is the restraint to stop at the level of fidelity required to successfully deliver a feature. If I'm working with existing design patterns that engineers are comfortable with, I stick to wireframes and written notes. That was the case for this external course entry feature.

I take pride in my high-fidelity design work, but it isn’t always needed. Employing the concept of "Minimum Viable Fidelity" helps teams move fast and keeps the work focused.

The Results

Empowering users to document training completed outside of the Essential CEU Institute platform increased value for existing subscribers and created greater incentive for potential subscribers to use the service. Our redesign of user profiles made it easier for individuals to track their progress and for teams to manage employee training with better visibility.