CHAITANYA GADDAMWAR
Reducing Cognitive Load in Healthcare Appointment
Booking System
In this project I focused on how front office staff books appointments in a healthcare system. The primary aim was to make patient selection easier and safer during a task that the staff repeats many times a day.​​ I worked on improving the first step of the booking flow so the staff (mostly aged above 50) could move through it with less effort and fewer decisions.
Alongside this, I also collaborated with my senior designer on several other user flows across the platform. While I can’t share those due to NDA restrictions, they involved deeper design challenges that contributed to broader usability improvements across the product.
01. People involved in the process
02. Context and Problem
The original booking flow placed many actions inside a single journey. Front office staff had to move through multiple steps without a clear sense of priority or completion.
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The existing book appointment flow had two tabs,
1. Schedule Appointment and
2. Manage Appointments
For selecting a patient for the appointment, the schedule appointment flow asks staff to lookup for an existing patient or create a new patient. The same system already allows staff to create new patients through the Manage Patients tab, which made patient creation inside the booking flow redundant. Also, the interface reveals, lookup inputs only after clicking on it and not upfront even after it being the only way to select a patient.
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Overall, the flow worked, but it required high attention and constant context switching. This made the experience harder for front office staff, especially considering that most users were aged 50 and above.
03. Constraints
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This project was based on an existing B2B SaaS healthcare platform with established workflows and system rules.
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Core system behaviour, validations, and backend logic could not be changed. All design improvements needed to work within existing technical constraints.
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Patient creation and validation already followed strict rules, such as mandatory email or phone number checks, which limited how much the flow could change.
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The platform supported multiple user roles, including front office staff, field staff, and providers, which restricted changes to shared screens.
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The primary users were experienced front office staff aged 50 and above, which required designs to remain familiar and avoid drastic interaction changes.
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The scope of work focused on refining the booking experience rather than redesigning the entire system.
04. Design goal & Changes made
My main design goal was to reduce mental effort for front office staff during appointment booking without changing the core system behaviour.
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I focused on removing early decisions that caused confusion. I did not redesign the entire workflow or introduce any new features. I kept most screens, logic, and interactions unchanged.
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I made a small set of focused changes to reduce confusion at the start of the booking flow while keeping the rest of the system unchanged.
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I removed the Manage Appointments option from the booking flow and placed it as a separate section in the side navigation. This helped front office staff clearly distinguish between scheduling a new appointment and managing existing ones.
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I also removed the Look Up and Create New Patient actions from the initial booking step. Instead of asking users to decide what to do first, I guided them directly into patient search as the starting point of the flow.
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I decided to show the Create New Patient button only after the system returned no matching results during patient search. This prevented premature patient creation and reduced the risk of creating duplicate records. In this way, front office staff could primarily focus on finding an existing patient first and then move to creating a new patient only when the system clearly indicates that no record exists.
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I simplified time selection by grouping time slots into three clear categories: Morning, Afternoon, and Evening. I added simple icons to each option to support quick visual recognition. This reduced scanning effort and helped users identify suitable time ranges faster.
I kept all other screens, logic, and interactions the same. Appointment search, staff assignment, onboarding steps, and confirmation remained unchanged. This ensured that the redesign respected existing system behaviour and avoided unnecessary disruption.
05. Impact Generated
These changes reduced cognitive load for front office staff and helped them complete appointment bookings faster with fewer mistakes.
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Clear separation between Schedule Appointment and Manage Appointments removes early decision stress and sets the right context from the first click. Staff no longer need to pause and decide which path to take before starting their task.
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A single, guided patient selection step removes confusion caused by multiple entry points. Front office staff can focus on finding the patient instead of choosing between similar actions.
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The Create New Patient option appeared only after patient search returned no results. While the system could already flag duplicate entries, this change reduced unnecessary attempts to create new patients and interruptions during appointment booking.
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Adding icons and text such as morning, afternoon and evening helped users understand availability at a glance. Icons support faster recognition, especially for older staff who rely more on visual cues than dense text.
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Overall, the flow felt calmer and more predictable. Staff could move step by step without second guessing, which supports quicker bookings, fewer interruptions, and better confidence while using the system. Impact was evaluated using task completion time, error rates during patient selection, number of steps before scheduling an appointment, and qualitative feedback from front office staff.
06. Key Learnings
Throughout the project, several usability insights emerged, many of them driven by small, practical changes that had a noticeable impact on real users. These takeaways highlight what worked, what mattered most, and what to keep in mind for similar enterprise design challenges.
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I found that changing the order of steps made a big difference. By guiding users straight to the most important part of the task, I helped reduce decision fatigue and made repeated actions feel quicker and easier.
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I learned that improving usability in a B2B SaaS platform often means working within tight system limits. Legacy workflows and strict validation rules can’t always be changed, so I focused on finding practical design solutions that worked within the existing setup.