Nurse Backpack
Mobile app for nurses to manage their credentials from the palm of their hand
ROLE Product Director
LAUNCHED 2018
Paperwork does not have to rule your life. Nurse Backpack empowers nurses to take control over their careers by providing an easy way to store, manage, and share their credentials from their phones.
Process
Personas: Nurses & Management
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Early Adopter
Travel Nurse
No interest in settling down right now. Plans travel nurse assignments according to weather, concerts, and sporting events. Uses travel nursing to subsidize adventures. Tech-savvy and good self-advocate.
Travel nurses travel light and frequently need to produce evidence of their credentials.
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Early Majority
Staff Nurse
No interest in settling down right now. Plans travel nurse assignments according to weather, concerts, and sporting events. Uses travel nursing to subsidize adventures. Tech-savvy and good self-advocate.
Travel nurses travel light and frequently need to produce evidence of their credentials.
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Late Majority
Nursing Manager
Plays the role of command central—providing support, recognition, just-in-time information, a calm hand and cool head in emergencies, and advocacy for patients, families, and staff. Has been around long enough to live through the EHR transition but has yet to see the same technological innovation - or investment - applied towards staff records.
Top 5 Pain Points
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Skills Checklists
Long and detailed required for EVERY assignment for EVERY skillset. Redundant information across multiple forms that could be handled by the app is easier than filling in paper forms - store once, use many.
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Hard Copy Requirements
Some hospitals still require paper copies of some documents (degree, certs, fingerprints). App includes secure electronic sharing of PDFs with “what to do with this” instructions for the hospital and the nurse can easily print from their own phone.
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State Regulations
Every state has different regulations (e.g., LPNs can’t draw blood in Iowa but can in most states; LPN not certified in one state, may work as a CNA but get paid at LPN). We started with Nursing Licensure Compact (NLC) regulations and map to other states and identify what position nurse qualifies for in each state.
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Unique Protocols
Every hospital has its own protocol, requirements. Provide private journaling. Let the Facebook groups take care of peer-to-peer. They already are the go-to for sharing tips, warnings, and lessons learned.
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Memory Prompts
Keeping up with scheduling required continuing education and state licenses, certification is critical. Missing a deadline means the nurse cannot be staffed. App will provide notification options (method and time) and options to sync to calendar. Training facility locations (ex: fire station with CPR validation) included in the calendar reminder.
App Prototype
We took the insights and themes we learned from interviews and research, and started prototyping to process the ideas themselves and to think through the options. We reviewed the wireframes with tech to ensure they were feasible and with business to ensure we were in line with business goals. Then we tested with users to validate our ideas.
True North
Clearly defining the core product gives a strong, unified direction for the design and the team.
MVP
In the Cloud
Storage
The majority of interviewees were comfortable with the idea of Cloud storage but not really clear on how it works. They already use cloud storage with services such as Google Drive and Pandora but didn’t realize that meant Cloud storage.
Self Document
Scanner
Nurses can use the camera on their phone to scan paper copies into their account.
Analogous Inspiration: Depositing checks on bank apps has proven to be a simple and secure solution.
Make it Worth it
Simple Onboarding
I knew it would take time to transfer from their binders to Nurse Backpack. So the onboarding process needed to be simple and designed to support the nurse’s schedule and needs.
Looking Ahead
Apple Watch
Smartwatches are popular with the nurses we interviewed. A future release could include a smartwatch app to sync credential deadlines, job opportunities, and other timely notifications.
Style Guide
We used a combination of Sketch with Invision and Axure to design and prototype Nurse Backpack. The brand message is to empower nurses with a secure, easy-to-use system. After testing, we ended up with a color palette that is harmonious and delicate. The geometric and elegant simplicity of the Montserrat font family offers high legibility on phones and desktops.
Quotes from App Store
Next Steps
After launching the app we focused on promoting and learning. We got the word out at nursing conferences (TravCon is an experience). Conferences also gave me the opportunity to interview and collect feedback from nurses, agents, hospital nursing managers, nursing school faculty, and students. I learned details like why nurses didn’t like the yellow in my new feature designs (reach out to me and I’ll explain). I also found an opportunity to team with schools and hospitals. They were looking for a non-paper-based solution as well. I was able to talk to people about solutions they had tried before. Thinking outside the traditional credential management processes was the initiative to Nurse Backpack’s success. It would not be difficult to turn the idea into a desktop version for administrators.
Enterprise Version
Before I moved on from Nurse Backpack, I started designing a desktop version for managing credentials of multiple nurses or students.