Varian Medical Systems
Summer 2020 Internship
Background
I joined Varian Medical Systems in 2020 summer as a User Experience Design intern in Oncology Software Solutions (OSS) team. Due to COVID-19, this internship was conducted remotely.
Varian Medical Systems’ vision is a world without fear of cancer. For more than 70 years, Varian has developed, built, and delivered innovative cancer care technologies and solutions for clinical partners around the globe to help them treat millions of patients each year.
All of my interaction design work is currently under NDA. Please feel free to contact me to learn more details!
My Role
Interaction & Visual Design
Date
May 2020 – Aug 2020
Project Intro.
I collaborated with a senior interaction designer on designing an unreleased oncology Electronic health record (EMR), which aims to help manage the complexity of the chemotherapy treatment process, which focused on medical oncology planning, administration, and documentation.
Challenges:
I was nervous about this virtual experience before I started. I was asking myself, how can I connect and collaborate with my team?
Also, understand the context of use, different goals and pain points from our users, and learning terminology and the treatment process of chemotherapy was also challenging for me.
How I overcame the challenges
Start from ground 0
I asked my manager to connect me with a clinical professional to give me a “Cancer 101” so I can ramp up with the important terminologies and understand the cancer treatment process.
Also, I researched and read articles regarding the needs of medical practitioners and design examples.
Collaborations and teamwork!
I collaborated with PMs who have clinical backgrounds, we brainstormed together on the context of use and scenarios, and prioritize functionalities.
Since things are virtual, I made sure to provide frequent updates to my mentors and note down their feedback, as well as clarifying my concerns and questions.
I also worked with researchers and listened to usability testing sessions to understand different pain points and goals from doctors and nurses.
I always tried to present my design proposals in our weekly internal UX team review sessions to brainstorm with the team.
Iterations
By quickly making iterations based on the constructive feedback from PMs, mentors, team members, and developers, I was able to deliver the ideal flow before I left.
Outcomes
Improved drug administration efficiency
Created the flow for clinicians to record multi-dose drug administration and medications taken at home by the patients themselves. I created and presented high-fidelity, clickable prototypes with real clinical data, and the design has been reviewed and approved in the OSS all-hands meeting.
Contributed to the design system
Designed a reusable pattern to filter medication orders.
Improved icon consistency and readability based on a grid design.
Created icons for complex concepts that don’t have standard metaphors, such as “toxicities” (Symptoms patients are feeling due to the treatment of cancer).
Improved visual consistency
Improved drug display in dose recording and ordering. Maintained a scannable content hierarchy on information dense screens.
“I had the pleasure to work with Yanshu during her (too short) internship. In a very short time, she was able to get immersed with a team with large shared knowledge and to make sense of it. She was able to quickly sort out the noise from the useful information and work out thoughtful, smart, and well-designed solutions to the problems that were put before her. In addition to demonstrating very good design and analysis skills, she was able to present her work to the team of stakeholders with aplomb and clarity.
She made a strong impression in a very short time and I would be thrilled to work with her again.”
