Helping vets work more efficiently in the surgery room
Project completed while working as a product designer at EzyVet.
A major update to Vet Radar’s surgery interface, designed to surface more information without distracting vets and vet nurses from their top priority - animal safety.
Users were having a hard time finding the information they needed at a quick glance. This was particularly an issue on the surgery sheet page in Vet Radar, as every second counts when they are working on a patient.
As a product designer on this project I:
- Held discovery interviews
- Created wireframes and prototypes.
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Ran user testing sessions most moderated and unmoderated.
I interviewed eight surgical vet practices from around the world that use Vet Radar. These conversations followed a semi-structured format, helping me understand how teams use the product day-to-day, what was working well, and what needed improvement.
Some of the insights included:
- Device flexibility: Vet nurses are often on the move and rely heavily on iPads. It’s essential that inputting information is quick and easy on smaller screens however they do often blow the UI up on TV’s as well, so it needs to be versatile.
- Critical notes being missed: Important notes were sometimes hidden or overlooked. These need to be surfaced clearly, as missing them could have serious or even life-threatening consequences.
- Limited visibility on patient sheets: Users wanted to see more line items at once, rather than needing to scroll up and down frequently which disrupted their workflow.
From there I began to ideate based on the HMW question “How might we design the patient sheet to display more critical information without compromising readability?”
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Introduce fixed “critical info blocks” at the top of the sheet for life-threatening alerts, allergies, or status’.
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Use bold colour cues (e.g. red/orange) and icons for immediate visual recognition.
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Smart collapse sections. Enable users to collapse or expand different sections.
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Design responsive layouts that prioritise what’s shown based on screen size.
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On smaller devices, show only the most critical info with a sticky toggle for expanded views.
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Enable voice note entry that converts to structured text and flags anything critical.
We introduced a collapsible overlay to the surgery sheet, that allows users to toggle between a compact and expanded view of patient information. The minimised version surfaces only the most critical details (these details were informed by direct feedback from vets and vet nurses about what must always remain visible, no matter what). On iPads and smaller screens, the minimised version of the overlay sits anchored at the bottom of the screen; a position that aligns with how vet nurses typically hold and interact with devices while on the move.
This approach gives users flexibility: they can view the full patient sheet without obstruction when needed, and expand the overlay to access deeper patient insights when required. It strikes a balance between always-on visibility and full-context detail.