Leading the UI/UX redesign that modernized Florida's statewide disease surveillance platform from a legacy .NET web application into a React MUI, glassmorphic design system — designed by me, built by the development team, and live during an active pandemic response.
67
Counties served · Florida DOH
3
Deliverables · Whitepaper, Style Guide v3, redesigned screens
1
Designer leading the redesign
Mid-crisis
Redesigned during the COVID-19 pandemic response
Florida's epidemiologists were tracking COVID-19 across 67 counties through HealthCheck — a disease surveillance platform whose interface had barely changed since the Windows XP era. The redesign had to land mid-crisis.
When COVID-19 emerged in early 2020, the Florida Department of Health was managing a historic public health response on top of a system designed for paper-form-era data entry. Dense rows, horizontal scrolling, nested dialog boxes, and a flat information architecture had become operational liabilities. Every second of interface confusion translated directly into delays in case investigation, lab triage, and CRF routing — work that, during a pandemic, mattered.
I was brought in as UI/UX Design Analyst for the visual and interaction redesign of HealthCheck — the central case-management interface used by public-health investigators, epidemiologists, and administrators across the state. The deliverables were three: a UI Trends Whitepaper, Style Guide v3 (the glassmorphic edition), and the redesigned screens themselves.
The project followed the traditional path: research, design, handoff, then development. I owned the research and design, handed the style guide and screens to the development team, and they built the new UI in React MUI to replace the legacy .NET interface. As the build came together, I reviewed the developers' work against the designs to confirm that what went live matched what I had designed.
The legacy HealthCheck interface, a .NET web application, reflected its origins: a form-driven desktop application ported to the web without UX reconsideration. Twelve to eighteen columns competed for attention in every table, critical status fields lived off-screen under horizontal scroll, and the site's forty-plus destination screens had grown organically over two decades with no consistent breadcrumb pattern. Field epidemiologists conducting site visits had zero mobile access — the entire system assumed a desktop, in an office, during business hours.
The reframe wasn't "make it prettier." It was: rebuild the cognitive surface so an investigator could triage 100+ cases without breaking concentration, route work between teams without leaving the screen, and act on a case from a phone at a site visit. Glassmorphism wasn't the goal — it was the visual language that made depth, layering, and progressive disclosure read at a glance.
The traditional path: research, design, handoff, then development. Each phase produced a deliverable the next phase depended on — the whitepaper justified the style guide, the style guide justified every individual screen, and the screens became the developers' blueprint.
Authored the UI Trends Whitepaper (2021) — a structured audit of the legacy interface, competitive analysis of modern healthcare dashboards, and a documented set of design principles. Every later decision had an evidential foundation to point at.
Built Style Guide v3 — colors, typography scale, components, alert patterns, and the glassmorphic layering rules. Locked the system before any individual screen was designed so the work would not fragment across contributors and 40+ destinations.
Redesigned the Epi Task Set, search results, outbreak management, patient profile, and resource library screens from one component grammar, then extended the system to tablet and mobile. For the first time in HealthCheck's history, field epidemiologists could log site-visit findings and create outbreak records in real time — a workflow that previously didn't exist.
Handed the style guide and screens to the development team, who built the new UI in React MUI. I reviewed their builds against the designs on web, tablet, and mobile to confirm that what went live matched the design intent.
"In disease surveillance, the wrong visual hierarchy can delay a case by minutes. Minutes are public-health infrastructure."
67
Florida counties · statewide reach
40+
Destination screens redesigned
3
Form factors · web, tablet, and mobile
This wasn't a redesign for a future roadmap. It went live while the outbreak was happening.
A full visual language defined before any screen was finalized: a teal-led palette tuned for status legibility, a Libre Franklin type scale, an alert system, and a glassmorphic layering pattern that became HealthCheck's signature.
After surveying 2021 UI trends in enterprise healthcare software, glassmorphism emerged as the optimal direction. The reason wasn't aesthetic — it was functional. Layered translucent surfaces let me separate reference data from actionable data, foreground from background, and primary records from extended demographics, all without adding panels or modals. Depth became the organizing principle.
Replaced a horizontal menu bar of nested dropdowns with a persistent vertical icon rail plus a contextual breadcrumb trail in system orange. Investigators always knew exactly where they were in the application hierarchy — and could reach any major destination in a single click without losing their current case context.
The Epi Task Set became the workspace's center of gravity. Live count badges on tabs — "Ready for Review 100+", "Needs Info 10", "Awaiting CRF 1" — let epidemiologists see queue depth before clicking. Daily prioritization decisions moved from gut feeling to glance.
Introduced a professional grid toolbar — COLUMNS · FILTERS · DENSITY · EXPORT — that fundamentally shifted the power dynamic between users and the interface. Investigators could customize what they saw without IT support; three density modes (Compact / Standard / Comfortable) matched the same screen to different workflows.
Every major interface decision was made to reduce cognitive load during crisis — not to look modern. The glassmorphism, the dual rail, the tab routing: all of it was in service of a user who couldn't afford to think about the UI.
The mobile design was built dark-first. Navy backgrounds reduced eye strain during evening site visits, conserved OLED battery, and informed the desktop glassmorphism palette in return.
Patient profile data was redesigned from a flat form into a set of layered glassmorphic surfaces — identity, demographics, and case information rendered as progressive disclosure rather than a single dense screen.
For the first time in HealthCheck's history, the interface followed the investigator. Site visits, outbreak rosters, and lab result triage all worked on tablet — same components, same hierarchy, same hierarchy of decisions.
Whitepaper · Style Guide v3 · redesigned screens — designed and handed off by me, built by the development team, and reviewed against the designs before going live during the pandemic response.
Designing for a high-stakes public-health system during an active pandemic compressed every design lesson into a single, high-pressure engagement. The biggest one: systems before screens. Writing the Style Guide before any individual layout was the call that saved the project. Without a locked color system, type scale, and component library, the work would have fragmented across forty-plus screens and a rotating cast of contributors. A documented system isn't bureaucracy — it's the thing that makes coherence survive the people who build it.
The second lesson was that the audit justifies everything. When stakeholders pushed back on glassmorphism, the UI Trends Whitepaper let me reference documented precedent from comparable healthcare platforms rather than argue from taste. Design decisions land differently when they arrive with a paper trail.
If I were rebuilding HealthCheck today, I'd push the mobile experience even further — closer to a first-class capability than a responsive extension. Field access was a workflow that simply hadn't existed before, and it would have been worth a whole second phase of investment.
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