A legacy healthcare product can become difficult to use long before its core functionality becomes obsolete. In this case, the generic drug reimbursement platform still needed to support established workflows, but its cluttered interface, excessive clicks, limited responsiveness, and outdated visual design created friction for users.
Desisle led the UI/UX redesign of the product, modernising the interface while preserving existing functionality. The work focused on clearer task flows, more intuitive interactions, improved responsiveness, updated branding, and a consistent design language across the application.
Project Overview
- Industry: Healthcare and medical
- Product: Generic drug reimbursement automation tool
- Product Type: Web application
- Services: UI/UX design and product redesign
- Role: Lead UI/UX Designer
- Project Team: One UI/UX Designer, two stakeholders, two frontend developers, one Delivery Manager, one Business Analyst, and one Technical Architect
- Project Period: 2021-2022
What Did Desisle Do?
Desisle led the redesign of a legacy generic drug reimbursement tool. The work included initial interface design, redesigning task flows, integrating new branding, guiding CSS and HTML implementation, and supporting the team in translating the design vision into the updated product experience.
The Challenge: Legacy Complexity Without a Blank-Slate Rebuild
The original product had an outdated and complex interface. Screens were cluttered, users had to navigate through excessive steps, and the product’s legacy coding created limitations around browser compatibility and responsive behaviour.
The challenge was not to replace functionality with a visually modern concept. The product needed to retain its existing capabilities while making everyday interactions easier to understand and complete.
This is a common constraint in healthcare and medical software: users often rely on established workflows, while product teams must improve usability without breaking the operational logic those workflows depend on.
What Made the Product Difficult to Use?
The supplied project context identified several usability problems:
- A cluttered legacy interface with too many elements competing for attention
- Task flows that required unnecessary clicks and movement across pages.
- Limited responsiveness and browser support caused by older coding foundations.
- An outdated appearance that did not reflect the company’s new branding.
- User feedback describing the platform as difficult to use and visually unappealing.
The redesign therefore needed to address both interaction complexity and visual consistency.
Recommended Visual: A before-and-after comparison of an existing workflow screen and redesigned screen.
Why It Matters: It gives readers concrete evidence of how information hierarchy and task flow changed.
Designing Within Technical Constraints
The redesign took place within an existing legacy product environment. That meant the UI could not be treated as disconnected from implementation realities.
Desisle worked with frontend developers, a Delivery Manager, Business Analyst, and Technical Architect to guide implementation. The goal was to improve the visible product experience while respecting existing functionality and the technical limitations affecting responsiveness and browser support.
The work included guidance on CSS and HTML implementation so the intended design system and interaction patterns could be translated accurately into the product.
Key UX and Product Decisions
1. Simplify Journeys Without Removing Core Functionality
Problem: Users needed to move through too many screens and clicks to complete tasks.
Decision: Redesign key task flows to remove unnecessary steps and, where feasible, support task completion within a single screen.
Why: Reducing navigation overhead can make a complex product feel clearer without changing the underlying business process.
Trade-off: Each simplified flow needed to preserve the information and controls required by the existing reimbursement workflow.
2. Make Information Easier to Scan
Problem: The old interface had too many competing elements, making it difficult for users to identify what mattered first.
Decision: Introduce a cleaner visual hierarchy and a more consistent layout approach.
Why: Users should be able to recognise key actions, statuses, and information without interpreting a dense or inconsistent screen.
Trade-off: Simplifying the interface required deliberate prioritisation of what remained visible by default and what could be organised into a clearer structure.
3. Apply New Branding Throughout the Product
Problem: The existing visual experience no longer aligned with the company’s updated brand direction.
Decision: Integrate the new brand identity into the redesigned interface.
Why: A coherent product experience helps the application feel more current and consistent across screens.
Trade-off: New branding had to be applied in a way that supported usability rather than introducing visual decoration that distracted from healthcare workflows.
4. Use Usability Heuristics to Improve Interactions
Problem: Users reported difficulty using the platform and navigating its complex UI.
Decision: Apply heuristic principles, including clearer error messaging and more intuitive interaction patterns.
Why: Consistent feedback and understandable interactions help users recover from errors and move through tasks with greater confidence.
Trade-off: Improvements had to work within the product’s existing technical and functional constraints.
The Redesigned Experience
The redesign established a cleaner, more modern web application experience for the generic drug reimbursement tool. The work focused on preserving functionality while improving how users interact with it.
Key areas of the redesigned product included:
- Simplified task flows with fewer unnecessary navigation steps.
- Screens designed to support task completion in one place where appropriate.
- Clearer interaction patterns and error messaging.
- A consistent UI language across the application.
- Integration of updated branding.
- Design guidance for CSS and HTML implementation.
- Improved attention to responsive behaviour and browser compatibility within the constraints of the legacy product.
Recommended Visuals:
- A redesigned task workflow showing the primary user action and supporting information on one screen.
- An error state or validation pattern demonstrating clearer feedback.
- A UI component sheet showing typography, controls, layouts, status patterns, and branded elements.
- A responsive comparison, only if approved screenshots demonstrate actual responsive implementation.
Outcome
The project delivered a modernised UI for a legacy medical product, with clearer task flows, a more consistent design language, updated branding, and an interface intended to be easier for both new and existing users to navigate.
The supplied project context reports positive stakeholder feedback on the redesigned usability and aesthetics. No approved client quote was provided, so that feedback should remain an unattributed qualitative outcome.
Post-launch product metrics were not supplied. This case study does not claim improvements in reimbursement processing time, claim accuracy, operational costs, user adoption, patient outcomes, compliance, or revenue.
What We Learned
Legacy-product redesign is not simply a visual exercise. The most valuable work often comes from identifying where existing workflows create unnecessary interaction effort, then improving clarity without disrupting the business logic behind the product.
The project reinforced the need to balance innovation with technical and operational constraints. A successful redesign respects what must remain stable while making the product easier to understand, navigate, and maintain visually.
Modernising a Similar Healthcare Product?
Healthcare and HealthTech teams often face the same design challenge: a product has important functionality and established user habits, but the interface has become difficult to use, inconsistent, or technically constrained.
Desisle’s current HealthTech positioning includes legacy medical system modernisation, while its SaaS redesign offering covers product and UX audits, workflow optimisation, UI modernisation, and design-system work.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Type of Product Was Redesigned?
The product was a generic drug reimbursement automation tool in the healthcare and medical sector.
What Was the Main Problem With the Existing Product?
The supplied project context identifies an outdated and cluttered UI, unnecessary clicks, complex task flows, limited responsiveness, browser-support issues, and user difficulty navigating the platform.
Did the Redesign Replace Existing Functionality?
No. The stated objective was to modernise the interface and improve usability while retaining the existing product functionality.
What Did Desisle Contribute?
Desisle led the UI/UX redesign, created initial screens, simplified task flows, incorporated new branding, guided CSS and HTML implementation, and supported execution of the design vision.
Were User Interviews or Usability Tests Conducted?
The supplied material reports user feedback about the legacy interface, but it does not confirm interviews, usability testing, analytics analysis, or other formal research methods. Those methods should not be claimed without further evidence.
Are Quantified Product Outcomes Available?
No approved quantitative outcomes were supplied. The case study should not claim click reductions, processing-time improvements, error reduction, adoption growth, revenue impact, or compliance outcomes.