Amanda Klausmeier

Case Study

Unified navigation, driving 4x clinical user adoption

Replacing fragmented, tool-by-tool navigation with a single global navigation system across the VA Clinical Decision Support platform used by 48,000+ clinicians.

My Role
Design Lead
Organization
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Timeframe
2025
Type
Information Architecture / Platform strategy

Impact

  • 48K+ — Monthly unique users (April 2026) - up from 10,278 in Feb 2025
  • 4x — User growth in 2025 - clinicians adopted the platform without changing how they work
  • 15+ — CDS tools now share one consistent global navigation
  • 0 — Workflow changes required - clinicians keep their entry point

Navigation built tool-by-tool, leaving clinicians siloed

The CDS platform grew rapidly - new tools and teams were added faster than any shared infrastructure could keep pace. Each application team built their own header and navigation independently, resulting in a platform that looked and behaved differently depending on which tool a clinician opened.

There was no shared wayfinding, no persistent patient context, and no way to move between tools mid-workflow without returning to the CDS console landing page - if the clinician even knew it existed.

Research with clinicians and patient safety experts across multiple studies confirmed what the team suspected: the most common workaround was bookmarking a single tool and opening it directly, bypassing the platform entirely. Most clinicians were effectively siloed inside one application.

  • 48K+ — Clinicians using CDS at the nations largest health system
  • 5+ — Product teams in the CDS pod, and still growing
  • 1 — Bookmarked tool most clinicians stayed siloed inside
  • 0 — Shared wayfinding or patient context across tools

Transformation

Before

  • Separate header and navigation per tool
  • No persistent patient context across tools
  • No way to move between tools mid-workflow
  • Clinicians bookmarked one tool and stayed siloed
  • Siloed feedback forms for every tool
  • Inconsistent look and behavior platform-wide

After

  • Persistent global header across every CDS tool
  • Patient name + last 4 SSN always visible
  • Collapsible sidebar to move between tools anytime
  • One unified platform experience
  • Single feedback form, filterable by tool
  • Reusable, documented design-system components

Key decisions

01. Persistent global header with patient context

Patient Safety / Information Architecture

A core patient safety requirement - the patient name and last 4 SSN must be visible at all times, in every application, regardless of which tool the clinician is using. This was non-negotiable and drove the header structure from the outset.

Discovery and interviews with product managers, engineers, clinical stakeholders, and patient safety experts validated where and how patient context needed to persist across edge cases.

02. Collapsible sidebar that meets clinicians where they are

Interaction Design

Clinicians frequently work with multiple programs side-by-side at narrow browser widths. Making the sidebar collapsible preserves the full application workspace when needed - particularly critical in data-dense environments like lab result views and clinical dashboards.

Rather than requiring clinicians to change their behavior, the design meets them where they already are. Even if a clinician continues to bookmark and open their preferred tool directly, the global navigation is accessible without any change to their workflow entry point.

Meeting clinicians at their existing entry points - rather than forcing a new one - is what let adoption scale 4x without a single mandated workflow change.

03. Build the navigation as reusable design-system components

Design Systems / Scale

The global header and sidebar were built as documented, reusable components within the Clinical Design System - scaling design and ensuring every current and future CDS application could adopt them without diverging from the seamless experience.

I also consolidated a handful of siloed per-tool feedback forms into one form accessed via the sidebar, letting the automated submissions report filter by tool so anyone across the portfolio could access all feedback or narrow down to a single tool.