• Design Democratization

  • Enabling stakeholdes outside of UX to independently create Medical Specialty pages

Overview

Utilizing design democratization principles to enable stakeholders outside of UX to independently create pages for the Medical Specialties area of uwmedicine.org.

Overview

Utilizing design democratization principles to enable stakeholders outside of UX to independently create pages for the Medical Specialties area of uwmedicine.org.

My role

Content Strategist

My role

Content Strategist

Team

Person 1 / UX Designer Person 2 / SEO Strategist

Team

Person 1 / UX Designer Person 2 / SEO Strategist

Timeline & duration

Sept 2023 - March 2024

Timeline & duration

Sept 2023 - March 2024

My Impact

01

Reduced 40+ page layouts in the Medical Specialties section of uwmedicine.org to 2 main page templates in Figma

02

Created flexible copy decks in Word that allowed stakeholders outside of design and content to independently create pages within our digital style guide standards

03

Created character count guidance for 45+ component configurations for the new templates

Context

🔎 Context

The Medical Specialties section of uwmedicine.org contains detailed information about 50+ areas of care. This is one of the largest patient-oriented sections of the website, and these pages often serve as people's first contact with UW Medicine on their pathway to care.

🤔 Problem

These pages were created by many individuals over multiple years, and as such 40+ variants of page layouts had been developed. To begin to combat this inconsistency, the Digital Experience team at UW Medicine needed leading to do individual consults with the content owners for each new page. While consistency was improving, it was at the cost of significant time and resources.

💡 Opportunity

We saw an opportunity to address both the issues of consistency and resources at once: by creating standardized templates that non-UX individuals could independently use.

Process

Gather data

Collect information from different design and development teams about the financial allocations, project schedules, and necessary resources for creating each type of template.


Cross-team collaboration

Work closely with partners and design leaders to steer the development of web content.


Documentation

Record essential details in a user-friendly format, taking into account the diverse requirements and preferences of all involved parties.


Create templates

Prepare a comprehensive guide on template usage for all partners, ensuring easy accessibility and the ability to update it seamlessly for future iterations.

Results

Increased stakeholder independence

During initial exploration sessions, partners were more adept at independently identifying the most suitable template for their content requirements.


Increased stakeholder independence

Numerous hours were conserved by streamlining communication between the DX team and different stakeholders regarding template selection. Additionally, this streamlined process even obviated the requirement for content design input in certain instances, thereby enabling the compact content design team to concentrate on more substantial tasks and requests.


Style guide integration

The DX team incorporated the template usage guide into their comprehensive digital style guide. This step ensured that a wider range of partners can access and gain a deeper understanding of content design choices.

Final templates

alix.medler@gmail.com

Alix Medler © 2024 All rights reserved.

alix.medler@gmail.com

Alix Medler © 2024 All rights reserved.