The problem
MinuteClinic had a kiosk check-in system, and it was fundamentally broken. Patients approached a dark interface with small text and confusing layouts, then met a flow that demanded everything before they'd secured a spot in the queue: name, date of birth, contact details, reason for visit, eligibility screeners, payment information, card-on-file consent, and walls of dense legal text, all before any certainty about when they'd be seen. Clinic staff were constantly stepping in to rescue check-ins or complete them manually.
The deeper problem wasn't the visual design, though that was genuinely poor. The structural problem was the information burden: the legacy flow treated check-in as a complete medical and financial intake, forcing every patient through the same 10+ mandatory steps regardless of why they came in. Meanwhile, staffing stayed reactive: one clinic turning patients away while another nearby sat with open availability, and no data to inform either.
The insight
Clinic staff feedback, complaints, and prior research pointed somewhere counterintuitive: the frustration wasn't fundamentally about wait time. Patients could tolerate waiting.
So the redesign had to answer a simple question: what information actually belongs in the check-in flow, and when? Remove everything else.
Key decisions
Strip the flow to only what belongs before the queue position
Chief complaint details, insurance, allergies, payment, card-on-file: none of it was needed to match a patient and put them in line, so none of it stayed in check-in. This wasn't about convenience; it was about information honesty. If a question doesn't need answering to secure a spot, it belongs later: after certainty, not before it.
The tradeoffClinical staff collect more during intake instead. That's appropriate friction: by then, the patient is confident in their position. The result: 10+ steps became 3–5. Match, reason for visit, queue position & estimated wait, consents, confirm.
Design large-format touch from first principles
A kiosk is a fundamentally different surface: viewing distance of one to two feet, a screen you physically reach to tap, users standing or seated, including patients in wheelchairs. No internal pattern library existed for it, so I used W3C large-format guidance as the baseline and adapted the Pulse design system: minimum 75px touch targets, 24px between elements, typography calibrated for viewing at a distance, and layouts that work from a wheelchair as well as standing height.
Build wait-time honesty into the core, and design for hardware that didn't exist yet
The moment a patient selected their reason for visit, they saw their queue position and estimated wait. No surprises later. This wasn't polish; it was structural to the whole redesign.
The system also had to run on legacy Linux hardware for immediate national rollout, but the accessibility team's Storm AudioNav keypad (tactile keys + audio guidance) was coming in Phase 2 on different hardware. I designed the architecture for the keypad before it existed, so Phase 1 launched accessible by design and Phase 2 needed no rework: the hardware just enabled what the software already expected.
The solution
The redesign became a new front door to care. Patients approach a cleaner, more inviting interface and start with the choice that matters: check in for an appointment, or wait for care as a walk-in. The system asks only what's necessary (match yourself, pick your reason) and then comes the moment that changes the experience: a real spot in line, with a real estimate. Consents, a review, confirmation. Five steps instead of ten, each one moving the patient closer to certainty.
Patients using assistive technology get the same flow: audio guidance and tactile keys, no separate experience, no afterthought. The design became a kiosk standard that CVS Health now uses across teams, extending the broader Pulse Design System.
The outcomes
The estimates were deliberately conservative: actual waits averaged half the quoted window, so the system routinely delivered a positive surprise. It built trust. And for the first time, clinic managers could see real demand data: when their location peaks, which days surge, how staffing aligns. Staffing decisions shifted from reactive to informed. The kiosk became not just a patient interface but a tool that made the whole operation smarter.
What I took from this
The most important design decision is often about subtraction, not addition. Comprehensiveness at the wrong time creates friction that undermines trust, so I learned to interrogate every piece of information in a flow and ask: does this belong here, or later?
And "accessibility from day one" means exactly that. When Phase 1 launched without the AudioNav hardware, accessibility was already built in. When Phase 2 arrived, the keypad was just the hardware that enabled what the software expected. That sequencing changed how I approach every project since.