Visualizing a New Approach to Veterinary Care for VCA Animal Hospitals

The Program

VCA is building a practice management application to support their North American veterinary practice and replace file and paper-based processes. I was one of two designers on the project hired by an organization that had VCA as a client. My design colleague was the visual designer, my role was interaction design and design strategy.

Type: Enterprise SaaS
Market: North America
Team: 2 Product Managers • 1 Technical Product Manager • 2 Designers • 11 Software Developers
Role On Feature: Senior Interaction Designer • User Research
Timeframe: 1.5-year Agile rollout • 2012

The Challenge

In human healthcare, the client and the patient are the same person. In veterinary care they're not. The pet can't speak for itself, which adds an entirely different emotional layer to an already charged healthcare experience, one the design had to account for at every touchpoint.

I was also brought in to solve a trust problem. VCA had lost confidence in the team's UX capabilities and was close to cutting it from the contract. Rebuilding that relationship was as critical as the design.

The first feature I worked on was a pet boarding and hoteling flow, one of three major operational services VCA offers alongside Healthcare and Grooming.

What Success Looked Like

Demonstrate we were the right fit for the UX portion of the project
Reduce staff training and onboarding time
Increase boarding price quote accuracy
Improve check-in and check-out efficiency
Increase boarding price quote accuracy
Improve medical record accuracy across paper and digital systems
Improve cage availability visibility and assignment
Support species, weight, and breed-specific care requirements

What Changed

The boarding proof of concept worked. VCA restored confidence in the UX process, kept the engagement intact, and what started as a contract rescue became an ongoing >12 year partnership. By the end of the first 2 years I had grown the design team from just myself to four designers.

-75%
reduction in staff training and onboarding time
-37%
reduction in average check-in time
+40%
improvement in boarding price quote accuracy
+52%
improvement in medical record accuracy over the previous paper system

How'd I get there?

Understanding the bigger picture with what's at stake

The VCA product VP was a student of Apple's design philosophy. Knowing that, I proposed two actions designed to speak directly to that values system: a field research strategy to demonstrate rigor, and a design proof of concept to show execution quality.

Conduct a user research study with hospital staff
Develop a design solution on one feature

I visited five hospitals to immerse myself in day-to-day staff operations: four cats and dogs facilities spanning oncology, surgery, and emergency trauma, and one all-critters hospital treating mammals, amphibians, and reptiles that I included deliberately as a contrast case for boarding and procedure variety. I already had pet owner experience, now I needed to get into the mental state of a pet care professional. As the project evolved, I returned to each hospital as each new feature deserved fresh eyes in the field.

The Strategy

Starting With People

How Does a Veterinary Hospital Operate?

Observing and interviewing hospital staff on location to understand their duties and pain points across several different sized veterinarian hospital brands.

Deep Dive on the research methodology

In the Field

Several Onsite Hospital Visits

Neighborhood Hospital
Full Scale Emergency and Trauma Hospital
Various Critter Hospital (Exotic Pets)

3 panel hand drawn comic strip: Panel 1: A cat is sleeping on a countertop. Panel 2: The cat wakes up and jumps on a keyboard surprising the receptionist. Panel 3: The computer shuts off, the receptionist is dismayed. — True Story: the most important argument for auto-save I've ever witnessed.

Sample Questions

What happens the moment the pet comes in the door?
How are the human and pet greeted?
What are the steps of the check-in process?
Why does a rushed drop off happen?
What is the boarding process?
What are the upsell opportunities?

Nobody Told Me About the Cat

Finding 1

A cat sleeping on the reception counter launched onto the keyboard mid-session. Patient notes lost. It captured exactly how unpredictable the front desk environment actually is.

Finding 2

VCA confirmed what common knowledge supports: dogs represent most of the boarding and grooming appointments. This data directly shaped the boarding calendar's default to dog cage types.

Finding 3

Cage availability was tracked on index cards in a back room. When a client called to check availability, staff had to put them on hold, physically walk to the back, check the cards, and call out to a colleague if they weren't sure. This was the operational reality the boarding calendar was designed to replace.

Finding 4

In the waiting room, I observed a family visibly distraught after checking in without a pet. A doctor appeared and took them to a side room. Their pet had passed away during treatment. The receptionist, unprompted, told me the new application should flag these situations so staff could act quickly and move the family to a bereavement area, avoid the waiting room entirely. It wasn't in the boarding brief. It informed the product thinking anyway.

Listening Closely

Interview Methodology

I selected participants across seniority levels where possible, covering five operational areas across five hospitals. I also brought our visual designer along as a deliberate introduction to field research as it was early in her time in her design career. We additionally interviewed two former VCA staff, a receptionist and a retired veterinary doctor, now working as corporate trainers. Their institutional perspective bridged the gap between how the software was designed to be used and how it was actually used on the floor.

What I Asked

I structured questions across three dimensions: technical, aspirational, and emotional. Interviews came first. Observations followed. The field was a chance to see whether what staff described and what they actually did matched up.

What is the most important aspect of a boarding?
What is one part of your job you would change? What would you change about it?
How would you create the opportunity for a personal touch?
How do you handle clients who are dissatisfied with the boarding?
Have you had a bad experience with a patient or boarder? What did you do?
How do the doctors and medical technicians feel about data entry?

The data entry question was about design opportunity as much as workflow: if an animal needs constant supervision during an exam, when and how does documentation happen? That distinction between the exam room and the reception desk was worth understanding before designing anything. This question opened up whether we needed separate UI patterns, voice input, or multi-staff considerations.

How I Synthisized

We took notes independently. We grouped answers into an affinity board to surface patterns across roles and hospital types.

Meet the Users

Our personas were created from a team effort between members of the VCA product and subject matter expert team, the visual designer, and me. We drew on interview data, the product team's operational knowledge, and hospital job roles.

* It is worth noting that on this project we enjoyed institutional support for our personas.

Brianna

Brianna owned the front desk. She was the first impression of every visit and handled greetings, bookings, check-ins, check-outs, client calls all at once. The boarding flow was designed around her workflow. Her system goal said it plainly: the legacy software was boring, and whatever replaced it needed to be faster, require fewer keystrokes, and be worth showing up to use.

Under 30, loves animals, views the role as temporary, yet a mostly enjoyable position.
They sometimes have the ambition to become a vet and they love learning new things.
They are frustrated with constant phone calls and people coming in, loud pets, dissatisfied clients, and occasionally colleagues.
They find the current software system boring, due to a lack of visual UI, and want whatever the new system is to be easier to learn.

Rose

Rose handled everything after check-in. Medical tasks with the vet, boarding care, cage management, note-taking, and in smaller hospitals, front desk duties too. She was emotionally invested in the patients. She was the middle person between the doctor and the receptionist, which meant the application needed to work across both contexts. Getting Rose right meant the design could scale to every hospital size.

Under 30, love animals, and look at the job as a career. They will leave to make more money and most want to become a veterinarian.
They perform a lot of the medical tasks and are responsible for the boarding area and care.
They are frustrated mostly with the work load and are emotionally invested into the patients they see frequently.
They want the system to be faster to learn and reduce work interruptions. If it can read their minds, that would be ideal.

Further Personas

We created additional personas for a veterinary doctor, groomer, office manager, and a large organization client e.g. animal shelter or police force. Two patient archetypes rounded out the set: a feline patient and an all critter edge case. In veterinary care the patient can't advocate for itself. The design had to do it instead.

Pet Boarding

Documenting pet owner and pet touchpoints about how a patient (pet) is boarded and other discovery moments.

Two Types of Pet Owners

The Runaway:

This pet owner is trying to beat traffic or possibly flee the country. They come in and want to hand off their pet as soon as possible. They may cut the line, may be aggressive or agitated, and may just possibly abandon their pet without properly checking in.

The Melancholic:

This pet owner has a hard time letting their pet go. They may ask a lot of questions, may give a long list of care instructions, and may require reassurance, extra attention, and might need a nudge out the door to get on.

Pet Journey Map

Unlike cats, dogs do not travel light. They arrive with leashes, toys, their favorite treats, and a full dossier of behavioral instructions. Cats arrive with everything, nothing, or somewhere in between.

Once the pet is greeted and checked in, usually with a clipboard and signed form handed back from the owner, they are escorted to where they will be boarded. The cage location and care instructions for the pet is critical throughout the stay. Different hospitals have their own criteria for daily play time, mealtime, and what personal belongings they will accept based on the reason and length of the pet's stay.

Outlining the Boarding Problem Statement

Hospital staff finds the current system tedious and limiting in functionality based on their current job responsibilities in providing accurate boarding quotes, determining boarding capacity, and efficiently identifying and checking in boarders and tracking their personal belongings and care schedule.

Execution

Quick Iterations To Build Confidence in the Process

Addressing the challenge of stakeholder confidence in the UX process, I borrowed from Lean UX principles and ran rapid design sessions on a whiteboard, with the entire team in the room. The result was immediate: stakeholders watched the process unfold in real time, asked questions, and weighed in as subject matter experts, getting a direct look at how I approached problems, not just the polished output.

Figure A1: Smart Sense Cage Suggestion Feature

Figure B1: Additional Upsells and Services Exploration

Figure C1: Boarding Booking Combined Wireframe Early Concept

Final Artifact of the Whiteboard Sessions

Figures A1 through D1 show the evolution of a base boarding screen with the stakeholders and applying the data I collected from visiting the hospitals. It was more UI than UX at this stage. As it was focused on getting the core booking elements right: cage size, animal type, date and time, and cost estimate. D1 was the final version of this base screen, built around dog cages.

Two issues with the whiteboard sketch that I needed to address. The calendar was limited to only one week, and the second was the booking UI was limited to only one type of species cage and one cage.

Figure D1: Wireframe of visual schedule of cage availability by week

Designing the Boarding Solution

Fixing the Whiteboarding Missed Opportunity

To solve the one cage and one species type problem, I introduced a tabbing element like browser tabs that is controlled by the left panel as the user indicates how many pets will be bordered. The tab name defaults to the species and since dogs are boarded more frequently the UI defaulted to the dog cages.

To solve the view more than one week problem, left side of the tab container was a scrollable calendar so the user could see all available cage types on a particular day. The scrolling was in sync across all tabs.

My solution also addressed the multiple pets sharing a cage problem. As the smaller cage sizes in the tab would become disabled from the UI if >1 pet was selected to share a boarding cage or kennel.

One Tab

Two Tabs

One Full Use Case

Booking any type of appointment for hospital staff always begins with two scenarios.

Existing Client

has pets on account or is adding a new one. Considerations: account standing, loyalty discounts, documented pet behavior.
New Client

no pets on account, no relationship history. Considerations: often comparison shopping, no loyalty incentive yet, frequently in a hurry.

Early Boarding Iterations

Here's a closer look at the use cases and problems I was working through.

Paul and his partner Karina want to get away for the weekend, so they call VCA to price shop on boarding 2 of their 3 pets. Brianna queries Woofware to determine the availability and the price for the two pets and inquires if they are existing clients. Paul and Karina agree to book the boarding.

Example Use Cases

Surface outstanding medical and financial items on the account during the booking flow
Show all available cage types and sizes across a date range at a glance
Support booking for existing pets and adding new pets in the same flow
Look up clients and associated pets by name, phone, or chart number
Enable staff to add boarding services and extras without a separate transaction

Dates entered, cage selected: drop-off Friday 16 Feb, pick-up Monday 19 Feb. The system calculates the cost in real time and highlights the selected date range. Brianna can confirm availability and pricing for Sparky without leaving the screen.

Adding a second pet splits the view into two side-by-side calendars, one for each cage. The tabs show the cage type by species. Once a pet is added from an account the tab label updates to the pet's name. Cost updates to $240 in real time.

Client search: typing Paul Smith returns both client and patient matches simultaneously. Multiple Paul Smiths surface immediately, each with their pets listed. Brianna identifies the right Paul Smith as the one with Boots, Fido, and Sparky, without asking for additional verification.

Client confirmed as Paul and Karina Smith. Sparky is assigned to Cage 1 (Dog X Large). Cage 2's dropdown is open showing available cage types. Brianna selects Cat Condo for Boots.

Assigning Boots to the Cat Condo: the pet dropdown shows age and weight alongside the name, giving Brianna the information needed to confirm the right cage size without opening a different screen.

Both pets assigned: the tabs now show Sparky and Boots by name rather than cage type, confirming the assignment. Sparky in a Dog X Large, Boots in a Cat Condo. Total cost updates to $200 and the appointment saves as a draft.

The full client record with Sparky's boarding details: medical alerts, boarding tasks, food preferences, and special considerations surface alongside the cost breakdown. Due items (vaccines, Dr. recommended services) are visible in the same view, giving Brianna a complete picture before confirming.

Booking confirmed: the draft becomes a reservation. A toast notification confirms both Sparky and Boots are booked for 17-20 Feb, the balance due updates to $290, and both appointments move from Drafts to Upcoming. The full workflow completes without leaving the client record.

Video of Prototype

Tasked Based Storytelling Through Prototyping

To test the design solution with users and for stakeholder review; I used Balsamiq as the de facto prototyping tool. The video incorporates further iteration and demonstrates one way Brianna would use Woofware to accomplish the task outlined in the following scenario.

Download a Transcript of the Screen Names and Steps

Impact

What I Accomplished

-75%
reduction in staff training and onboarding time
-37%
reduction in average check-in time
+40%
improvement in boarding price quote accuracy
+52%
improvement in medical record accuracy over the previous paper system

Woofware Phase 1 was released into five hospitals on schedule as a three-month Beta test to measure how well we accomplished our goals in the complexity of real life situations. It was then rolled out to VCA's 1000+ hospitals across the USA, Mexico, and Canada. In the middle of the Beta, I earned a second promotion to become the UX Practice Manager for iLink Digital Inc. and ceased having direct day to day individual contributor responsibilities with VCA and Woofware.

A few years later, I rejoined iLink Digital specifically to work with Mars Veterinary Health on Voyager Health. This SaaS platform is the successor of Woofware. I led design on several products and features such as the Accounts and Operations Dashboard.