1. Context

Greyfinch is a Practice Management Software (PMS) designed primarily for orthodontic clinics. Its platform enables the management of tasks ranging from patient acquisition to appointment scheduling, billing, and communication.

At the heart of the platform lies the Calendar—a crucial tool for all three primary user roles: Doctors, Front Desk, and Assistants. It allows users to manage appointments, view daily schedules, and organize doctor chair assignments at a glance.

2. The Challenge

While the support team helped clinics with initial calendar setup and first steps, scaling the platform made personalized assistance less feasible. To address this, we launched an initiative to identify key user pain points with the calendar, aiming to improve usability and overall user experience.

3. Discovery

Through interviews, surveys, and usability testing with doctors and staff, we pinpointed critical areas for improvement. These insights were categorized and translated into actionable solutions in Figma:

• Appointment scheduling: Simplify scheduling for existing and new patients, with smarter handling of closed days.
• Rescheduling: Streamline appointment changes for both individuals and families.
• Day occupancy insights: Provide visual cues about how busy a day is and AM/PM slot availability.
• Appointment details: Enhance data visibility, including patient information, contact details, and relevant notes.
• Family scheduling: Support bulk scheduling and rescheduling for family groups.
• Notes and comments: Integrate appointment-specific notes for better communication.
• Additional features: Include a full-day zoomed view, template management, and staff assignment tracking.

4. Solution

To tackle these challenges, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of all appointment workflows and proposed a unified, streamlined solution.

Everything Fits in the Sidebar

We redesigned the calendar experience by consolidating all actions into a new, intuitive sidebar. This sidebar kept the calendar visible at all times while adding advanced functionalities, such as:

1. Detailed patient information: Scheduling and modifying appointments now includes comprehensive patient details to streamline the process.
2. Grouping past and upcoming appointments: For existing patients, we grouped their appointments into past and upcoming categories, making their schedule more accessible.

3. Mini-calendar view: A compact calendar view allows quicker navigation and an overview of daily availability.
4. Next available appointment slot: The sidebar suggests the first available slot for a new appointment, complete with predefined time suggestions.

5. Streamlined scheduling queue management: We introduced a simplified workflow that enables effortless management of a scheduling queue. This enhancement allows users to handle multiple appointments sequentially, ensuring an organized and efficient booking process for both patients and staff.

5. Outcome

These updates significantly enhanced the user experience and empowered clinics with greater autonomy. Our Customer Service team could now allocate resources more effectively to other tasks.

Key results included:

• Pain points resolved: Identified and addressed critical calendar issues through user interviews and structured research.
• Centralized insights: Leveraged a centralized research and project workflow to deliver well-defined insights.
• Improved usability: Simplified appointment management through the sidebar and introduced highly requested features like a mini-calendar and patient detail enhancements.

6. Next Steps

Given the Calendar's pivotal role in Greyfinch, further improvements remain essential. We aim to continue user-driven innovation by conducting competitor research and engaging closely with doctors.

By refining the existing tools and exploring new opportunities, we strive to make Greyfinch even more indispensable to our users, ensuring their workflows remain intuitive and efficient.