Information Architecture for Performance Medicine
Existing pattern in system
As performance medicine or an EMR’s main task is recording information and displaying it, the information architecture of how the data was structured and displayed was of utmost importance. In other parts of the Kitman product there was a narrow and deep IA with the user having to dive into an athlete or an event to find information.
The narrow and deep IA of the rest of the Kitman product
New pattern for Performance Medicine
We knew from our research that practitioners wanted this information more quickly as well as being able to see it at a squad level. It was important for us to prioritise this and start to surface this information at the squad level and go broader with our IA style. However, due to the amount of information held in an EMR we couldn’t change the entire structure to broad and shallow so we had to go with a hybrid broad and deep structure. This allowed information to be surfaced at the squad level but still be available at the athlete level and injury level, giving practitioners both the quick view at the top level and the more comprehensive background of an athlete or injury once they wanted to dive into it.
Previously diagnostics, medications, and treatments were tagged on to the injury, shown within the injury modal. When an athlete had a long term injury it became difficult to understand the full history of that injury, all the notes, medications, and diagnostics. This was raised both during the NFL RFP and the research project so we knew we needed to make it easier for practitioners to read these larger injuries. Expanding injuries from a modal to a full file with tabs for each type of entity attached allowed them to get a better understanding of the injury.
Broad and deep structure of Performance Medicine IA
Testing
As well as doing internal user testing with our internal experts and remote user testing over calls with practitioners from a couple of different sports we also had the opportunity to do in person testing on-site with athletic trainers from NFL teams such as the Los Angeles Chargers, Las Vegas Raiders, and New York Giants before a further testing session at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis. This allowed us to test and iterate on our designs with practitioners from all 32 NFL teams before the build commenced. It also allowed us to build relationships with practitioners from these teams before doing further on-sites and testing which greatly helped with the following features as well as the company’s sales efforts in those clubs.
