Design Leadership: Q-interactive 

Q-interactive is a seamless enterprise system that is revolutionizing an entire profession. Psychologists, speech pathologists, neurologists, and similar professionals look to world class precision instruments to measure the abilities and challenges of children and adults who are at extremes of human experience.

​Q-interactive enables these tests to be performed with two iPads, one for the practitioner and one for the examinee. Entire libraries of boxes that could fill a room are now available to the practitioner in a briefcase, at a moment's notice, with greater accuracy and speed, and, most important of all, increased attention on who really matters in the moment: little Kyle who has ADD and is having trouble learning to read in school.

For four years I led a team of talented designers and researchers responsible for the interaction and visual designs of the practitioner, examinee, and back-office platforms that make this all possible. We designed it through ten-fold growth from a 100-user, single geography beta, to an international revolution. It was work with mission; it mattered that we did it well.

Challenging Audience

In any single product workflow, our team accounted for such diverse needs as that of a neurologist, a baby with delayed motor and cognitive abilities, a worried parent, a speech pathologist, a psychometrician, and an administrator who keeps it all together. To help meet this challenge, I established a simple practice of calling out our domain experts to "Tell me about a time when you used this instrument in your practice." This humanizing approach was hard-won, but opened the entire product scoping and planning process. Throughout the lifecycle, everyone came to know not just what we were doing, but why, and for whom.

To further that end, it was my privilege to establish and facilitate the first design studios in the organization's long history. Folks across the division began to clamor for invitations to participate in co-design!

Deep Domain

As a design and research leader, I brokered what are now routine cross-disciplinary pairing of designers with domain scientists. This has resulted in rapid ramp-up times on wildly diverse projects, and increased accuracy of designs that must measure hundreds of constructs with statistical precision, and with ease.

Lightness & Fluidity

Through all of this complexity, our team brought the best of current design, ease, and even beauty. From a leadership perspective, meeting this challenge was about bringing together interlocking UX talent, and knowing when to pave the way and when to defend the best practices they bring to the fore. This was one of my favorite parts of what I did every day.

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