Traumasoft
Holistic Scheduling &
Enterprise Design System

Vocabulary change + a confirmation modal that previews exactly which date ranges will be hidden. Low technical cost, maximum trust impact. This single change would eliminate the #1 anxiety reported by schedulers across all interviews.

Select shifts (e.g., all of January, Region 1) → prompt: "To which date range do you want to copy?" → auto-generate the duplicate. Eliminates 1,825 hours/year of manual recreation. The single highest-ROI feature in the entire analysis.

Implement the 4-group structure (Strategic / Tactical / Inbox / System). The items don't change — only the grouping does. Zero backend work required. Dramatically reduces onboarding time and "where is X?" support tickets for new schedulers.

Employee panel (left) → drag card → drop onto shift slot in the grid. The Calendar View redesign already includes this interaction in Figma. In concept testing, this was the most spontaneously requested feature — users expected it to already exist.

The Dispatch Grid:
Where Every Second Costs

The CAD Grid is the operational heartbeat of Traumasoft — the real-time dispatch view where every active ambulance, wheelchair unit, and crew assignment is visible at once. Dispatchers live in this screen during every shift, managing incoming calls, tracking unit status, handling callouts, and coordinating crew coverage across multiple regions. In this context, UX friction is not an inconvenience — it is a patient safety risk. A missed incomplete-crew indicator, an overwhelming right-click menu, or a buried action during a callout can cascade into an uncovered shift, a delayed response, or an operational emergency.

Why CAD Cannot Be Fixed in Isolation

One of the most important insights from the analysis is that the CAD Grid is the last mile of a 4-phase setup chain. Problems that appear on the dispatch screen often originate upstream — in how Shift Profiles were created, how templates were published, or how employees were assigned. Fixing only the CAD UI without addressing the configuration pipeline would produce surface improvements without resolving the root causes of dispatcher friction.

7 Key UX Insights — CAD & Configuration

The Callout Journey — A Dispatcher's Perspective

It's 2am. No supervisors on site. A paramedic calls in sick. The dispatcher must mark the callout, find a replacement, and ensure the unit doesn't go out understaffed — all while monitoring active calls. Here is exactly what the legacy CAD system makes them do:

From Legacy Grid to
Clarity Under Pressure

The new CAD designs translate the friction inventory directly into focused design interventions. Each decision is traceable to a specific pain point, grounded in dispatcher behavior observed during on-site ethnographies, and validated against the holistic scheduling design system to ensure visual and interaction consistency across modules.

5 Shared Design Principles — CAD Module

The scheduling system is misunderstood by its own users

The Template vs. Published Schedule distinction — arguably the most fundamental concept in Traumasoft — was not understood by the majority of participants in Phase 1. Most users worked around the system rather than with it. Schedulers who had been using Traumasoft for 3+ years still had misconceptions about what "Delete" did on the publish page. This was not a training failure — it was a design failure. The mental model was never made visible in the UI.

Dispatchers operate in constant exception mode — the system assumes a default that rarely exists

On-site shadowing at dispatch centers revealed that dispatchers rarely experience a "normal" shift. Callouts, level-of-care mismatches, late punch-ins, and incomplete crews were daily events — not exceptions. Yet the entire CAD Grid was designed for the normal case, with exceptions invisible or buried. The system was built for an idealized workflow that almost never occurs in practice.

Role boundaries are fluid in EMS — research quotas must account for this

We planned to recruit distinct Dispatcher, Scheduler, Field Crew, and Admin cohorts. In reality, the majority of participants wore multiple hats simultaneously. A "dispatcher" was often also an admin and sometimes a scheduler. This meant that the cross-role journeys we documented — particularly the Scheduling-to-CAD handoff — were far richer than single-role research would have produced. The hybrid participant phenomenon became a finding in itself.

The CAB session was the single most valuable research artifact

The Client Advisory Board session — a structured facilitation with real operators from 5 partner companies — surfaced operational non-negotiables that individual interviews had not. The "Priority Stress Test" activity forced stakeholders to choose one capability over all others, producing clear consensus that became the explicit scope filter for the entire design phase. The CAB session also revealed that dispatch authority and compliance audit trails were non-negotiables that the generic component library we had been given completely ignored.

The highest-value improvements were vocabulary and visibility — not new features

The two changes with the largest projected impact on daily operations were: (1) renaming "DELETE" to "Remove Future Shifts" with a confirmation preview, and (2) making incomplete crew status visible in the CAD Grid. Neither required new functionality — both required rethinking what was already there. The most impactful UX work in this engagement was not additive. It was clarifying what the system already did, and making it honest about it.

Domain depth is not optional in safety-critical systems

EMS is not a typical enterprise context. Dispatchers make decisions under time pressure that affect patient outcomes. Every UX choice — touch target size, status color contrast, confirmation dialog wording — operates in a domain where errors are not just frustrating, they are potentially dangerous. I learned to ask "what happens at 3am during a mass casualty event?" before finalizing any interaction. That question is now part of my standard design review process for any safety-critical system.

Research and design systems must be directly coupled

In most engagements, research and design system work run as parallel, loosely connected tracks. At Traumasoft, I argued for direct dependency: no component was formalized until the research had validated the workflow context it would appear in. A status chip for "incomplete crew" was not designed in the abstract — it was designed after we had watched dispatchers miss that exact state during on-site shadowing. This coupling added time upfront and eliminated expensive rework in Phases 3 and 4.

Legacy users need evolution, not revolution

Users who have spent years in a system — even a frustrating one — develop deep muscle memory and mental models. The Daily Worksheet's 3-iteration journey taught me that the most effective redesign strategy is progressive elevation: preserve structural familiarity, systematically improve clarity and hierarchy. The final approved design kept the operational structure dispatchers expected, while making exceptions visible, status readable, and actions guided. Users described it as "the same, but finally working."

Stakeholder facilitation is a design skill

The CAB session's "Priority Stress Test" — forcing 15 stakeholders from 5 companies to agree on a single highest-priority capability — was itself a design artifact. It had a structure, a purpose, and a measurable output. Running it well required the same skills as designing a good interface: clear information hierarchy, progressive disclosure of complexity, and a confirmed commitment before moving on. I now treat stakeholder facilitation as a core UX deliverable, not a meeting.

Journey maps are most valuable when they cross role boundaries

The decision to organize journey maps around operational workflows (Scheduling journey, Dispatching journey) rather than individual personas was one of the most consequential choices of the project. Because EMS staff routinely play multiple roles in a single shift, cross-role journey mapping surfaced handoff friction — the moment where scheduling decisions became dispatch problems — that persona-centric maps would have completely missed. The incomplete crew problem in CAD is a scheduling problem in disguise.

Scope discipline protects research quality

With 10 partner companies, dozens of stakeholders, and a platform covering 8 modules, scope creep was a constant risk. Using the CAB session outputs as an explicit, documented scope filter — "we prioritize Scheduling and CAD because that is what the participants themselves chose" — gave every subsequent scope discussion an objective anchor. When a stakeholder asked why we weren't redesigning billing or ePCR, the answer was the participants' own words. Documented research makes scope decisions defensible.

• →Deliver Phase 3.2 usability testing reports for Scheduling and CAD
• →Finalize refined prototypes for both modules
• →Present Strategic UX Report to Traumasoft leadership
• →Deliver Final Presentation with adoption plan

• →Extend Design System to ePCR and Billing modules
• →Conduct longitudinal testing with pilot EMS companies post-launch
• →Establish Traumasoft internal design governance committee
• →Build partner linking feature (Jen + Ed always work together)

• →Full platform migration to new design system
• →Mobile companion app for field crew (shift visibility, punch-in)
• →Analytics dashboard for operations directors
• →Employee Portal redesign with self-service scheduling

"The most powerful thing we did was start with a CAB session where real dispatchers and schedulers told us, unprompted, what could never break. That list became the design system's non-negotiable constraints — and it prevented us from optimizing for the wrong things."