USER EXPERIENCE
Digital Modernization of iQIES through Research and Design
SUMMARY:
As a part of the Human-Centered Design team for iQIES (Internet Quality Improvement & Evaluation System), I collaborated closely with product managers, developers, and stakeholders to design provider-level software application features for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
CLIENT:
ICF helps to support the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in its digital modernization efforts.
ROLE:
UX/UI Designer, 2022-Present
iQIES has helped reshape the Long-Term Care Survey Process
LTCSP Design 📝
LTCSP stands for Long-Term Care Survey Process.
It is the federal survey protocol used by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to inspect and ensure the quality of care in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. The LTCSP guides state surveyors through standardized procedures when evaluating whether facilities are in compliance with federal regulations for resident care, safety, rights, and overall environment.
It replaced previous survey processes to provide a more efficient, person-centered approach that includes structured interviews, observations, and record reviews.
[fig 1]
User Experience Research for Investigations
LTCSP Investigation Discovery 👩🏼🏫
To inform future iQIES designs, the research team set out to explore user experiences with the LTCSP Investigation screens and process. The Human-Centered Design (HCD) team conducted 10 sessions with 8 state users and 2 CMS participants. While the legacy tool was considered “acceptable,” users identified several areas for improvement. Key feedback included the need to optimize screen space, visualize task progression, enhance note-taking flexibility, simplify tag adjustments, offer varying levels of guidance, and re-evaluate the effectiveness of the drawing tool.
10
In-depth intervies
8
State participants
2
CMS participants
Investigation Assignments 🔎
Investigation assignments refer to the specific tasks or areas of focus that surveyors are assigned to investigate when conducting inspections at long-term care facilities (such as nursing homes).
In iQIES, investigation assignments are used to:
Organize and streamline the survey process for the survey team
Assign specific surveyors to investigate certain care areas
Document findings tied to specific F-tags (federal regulation tags)
Ensure comprehensive coverage of all required investigation areas during the LTCSP
UX/UI Design for Investigation Assignments
[fig 2]
[fig 3]
[fig 5]
[fig 4]
The images above illustrate the project lifecycle for Investigation Assignments. The legacy tool [fig 1] required a redesign to retain core capabilities such as viewing investigative areas, residents, and assigned surveyors. The updated design(s) introduced new functionalities, including bulk assigning or reassigning surveyors across multiple residents, and designating a primary surveyor for each resident.
Fig 5, Fig 6 was prototyped and tested with real users.
[fig 6]
Investigation Assignments UT Findings 🔖
The HCD team conducted interviews and usability testing to better understand user experiences with the Investigation Assignments feature, uncovering pain points and identifying opportunities for improvement.
Investigation Assignments Research
10
UT sessions
12
State Agency participants
1
CMS participant
What we learned…
Users rated 4.6/5 for ease of use! ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Users who engaged with the tool found it intuitive, with options tailored to their access levels, which helped guide task completion. Many described the screens as functional and user-friendly. During usability testing, participants completed several tasks, including tab-based sorting, locating unassigned tasks, assigning a surveyor, assigning multiple surveyors, designating a primary surveyor, and bulk task assignments.
Recommendations based on feedback included visually refining the bulk assign functionality, enhancing the impact of visual cues ensuring users understand their purpose and value, and providing additional context or links to support efficient task balancing during investigations. Streamlining navigation and reducing the number of clicks was also suggested to improve overall assignment efficiency on the screen. Another recommendation based on feedback was to include residents’ locations within the facility—such as floor and room numbers. This would help surveyors save time by allowing them to quickly see floor assignments and coordinate accordingly.
Surveyors shared a variety of specific preferences, with many favoring the screen to default to a By Surveyor view. Most preferred that the list be initially collapsed, with an option to expand all. There was also a request to auto-populate surveyors for certain facility tasks and to include a ‘select all’ option in the assignment dropdown.
Additionally, assigning the primary surveyor task caused some confusion. The star icon used to indicate this role was commonly interpreted as “setting a favorite” rather than designating a primary. To improve clarity, one suggestion was to replace the star with a “P” icon.
Updated designs:
[fig 7]
Designs were revised and prepared for developer handoff. Enhancements included the addition of a new column for resident location, a more visual and data-driven icon system to represent residents, current surveyors, and total care areas. The previous tab layout was replaced with filter and search functionality for improved usability.
Investigation Assignments // Exploratory Design
Header Updates ✨
As part of an innovation initiative, our product team explored making surveyor names clickable within the investigation assignment screen headers. The goal was to enable on-screen filtering for a more streamlined and intuitive user experience. I designed multiple button states—including default, hover, selected, and deselected—to support this interaction. Although the feature was ultimately not implemented due to project scope constraints, the concept work was archived for potential future use. I’ve included samples of the design work below.
[fig 6]
*Graphic UI and imaging has been altered to protect PII and follow confidentiality clauses.