Michigan Medicine

Making interpreter resources easier to find when staff need them most

Michigan Medicine staff use the Interpreter Services Portal to request interpreters, find translation resources, and access support for communicating with patients across language barriers.

As design lead on a five-person team, I guided the visual and interaction design direction while contributing to research, information architecture, prototyping, and usability testing.

Our goal: help staff understand where to go and what to do next, without adding more complexity to the system.

The resources existed. Finding them was the problem.

The existing portal contained the information staff needed, but unclear navigation, overlapping pathways, and a dense homepage made it difficult to know where to begin.

This was especially challenging for new and infrequent users, who couldn't rely on memory to navigate the system.

Instead of adding new features, we saw an opportunity to make the resources already there clearer, faster to access, and easier to understand.

*The original portal gave many resources similar visual weight, making high-priority actions harder to identify.

What we learned

We started by looking at how staff were actually using the portal through an accessibility audit, heuristic evaluation, interviews, open card sorting, and a survey of approximately 300 Michigan Medicine staff.

Three findings shaped the redesign.

01 — Staff came to the portal to complete a task, not browse.
They wanted to find what they needed quickly rather than explore the portal.

02 — Frequent users knew their way around. Infrequent users didn't.
Experienced staff could rely on memory, while others had to figure out the navigation each time.

03 — Users needed clearer structure, not more functionality.
Labels, organization, and hierarchy created more friction than missing features.

That changed how we approached the redesign. The question became less about what we could add and more about how we could make the existing experience easier to navigate.

Reorganizing the portal around staff tasks

The existing architecture mixed services, resources, policies, and support information together.

Using our research and card-sorting findings, I helped translate these patterns into a revised information architecture built around clearer, task-based categories.

The revised structure separated primary services from supporting resources and kept most content within two to three levels of the homepage.

We wanted the portal to reflect how staff actually searched for information, not how that information happened to be organized internally.

Creating a clearer hierarchy

Research consistently pointed to requesting an interpreter as one of the portal's highest-priority tasks.

I led the homepage design direction around making “Request an Interpreter” the clearest place to start while reducing competition from secondary resources.

Instead of giving every option equal visual weight, we established a clearer hierarchy: primary actions first, followed by supporting resources. Urgent actions received greater prominence without overwhelming routine workflows.

We stayed close to Michigan Medicine's existing brand so the redesigned portal would still feel familiar. We also adjusted typography, hierarchy, and interface patterns to improve readability and accessibility.

The goal wasn't to make the interface louder. It was to make priority easier to understand.

The final experience

The final design gives staff one clear starting point while keeping the full range of Interpreter Services resources accessible.

“Request an Interpreter” anchors the homepage as the primary action, while task-based categories make supporting resources easier to predict and find.

Quick Links surface frequently needed information in a more scannable format, and simplified navigation creates a more consistent experience across pages.

For situations requiring immediate support, we designed a distinct emergency pathway that remains easy to find without making the rest of the portal feel urgent.

Clear confirmation and system feedback help staff understand what happened after taking action and what they should do next.

Did the redesign make tasks easier?

To validate our decisions, we conducted moderated usability testing with five Michigan Medicine staff members.

Participants completed comparable tasks using both the original portal and our redesigned prototype, including requesting an interpreter, locating translation contact information, and navigating an urgent interpreter scenario.

In the redesigned experience, participants completed tasks more quickly, made fewer navigation errors, and described the portal as cleaner, easier to navigate, and more intuitive.

Testing also showed us where the design could improve. In particular, Quick Links needed greater visibility, and the emergency pathway needed to remain prominent across different contexts. We carried those findings into our final recommendations.

What I took forward

This project reinforced that improving a product doesn't always mean adding something new. Here, the more useful intervention was simplifying what already existed — clarifying the information architecture, strengthening hierarchy, and making important actions easier to recognize.

As my largest enterprise design project to date, it also challenged me to think beyond individual screens and design within a healthcare system of nearly 20,000 employees. At that scale, consistency, accessibility, and clarity become especially important, because even small design decisions can shape how staff navigate critical workflows.

When someone needs support quickly, making the next step clear can matter more than adding another feature.

Created in collaboration with Lily Steinmetz, Joe Marino, Nour Bazzi, and Evelyn Nguyen