Case Study · Web / iPad App
Earture: On-Site Ear Testing
A web and tablet app used by CAOHC-certified technicians running hearing tests at client facilities. Session setup went from around 20 minutes to under 10.
Role
Product Designer
Timeline
12 Weeks
Platform
Web · iPad App
Problem
The old system made simple things hard. Technicians had to jump between screens to start a test, track who was where, and check calibration. Everything a session needed lived in a different corner of the app. Setup ran long, small mistakes compounded, and new technicians couldn’t get through a session without asking a supervisor.
Outcome
I rebuilt the flow around a single guided workflow. Tests, participants, and calibration in one place. Setup time roughly halved. New technicians started running sessions independently.
My Research Approach
How I gathered insights
Live shadowing wasn’t possible. On-site testing operations don’t allow observers inside sessions. I ran structured questionnaires through the technician team lead instead. Six of eight technicians reported the same friction: they couldn’t reliably start a test. That signal was strong enough to anchor the redesign around flow clarity and reduced manual intervention.
1.
Starting a test was the biggest friction point.
Six of eight technicians described the initiation flow as confusing. Newer technicians in particular flagged the outdated interface: no clear navigation, no user-centric structure.
2.
Onboarding took too long.
New technicians needed too many hours to become independent. The interface was slowing down the exact people it was meant to help.
3.
Participant management was stressful.
Managing participant data live meant hopping between screens. Consolidating participant management and testing onto a single screen was the obvious fix.
4.
No visual hierarchy, no feedback.
Technicians couldn’t tell whether an action had worked. No progress states, no error states, no cues about system status. They were compensating by asking for external help.
What this changed in my approach
The takeaway wasn’t “make the UI cleaner.” It was “give the workflow a spine.” That shifted the redesign from UI polish to restructuring the whole experience around task flow and decision-making.
Ideation and Conceptual Design
I mapped out three directions before committing.
The three:
Improve the existing interface with small simplifications. Introduce a step-based guided workflow. Build a centralized dashboard for more control.
Decision Taken
The guided workflow plus a centralized interface. The combination reduces cognitive load and moves users through tasks in order.
Trade-off
It adds a couple of navigation steps. It also reduces user errors and cuts session setup time. In this context, it was a clear trade.
Why I made this call
The decision to unify Calibration + Seat Assignment into a single view wasn’t aesthetic, it was operational.
In the old flow, technicians had to context-switch between screens mid-session while participants were already seated. That’s where they lost their place, or recalibrated something they’d already calibrated. Consolidating those steps into one progressive interface with real-time seat status meant technicians didn’t have to hold information in short-term memory. The step-by-step sidebar (Select Mobile Unit → Bio Simulator → Assign Seats → Calibration) was structural, not decorative. It’s a cognitive offload tool for someone managing eight people at once under time pressure.
Roughly 90% of the testing process now moves through four defined steps with clear instructions.
Highlights of the Design
Calibration Process
Step 1: Select Mobile Unit
The flow starts with the vehicle, not the equipment. Pick the wrong unit and everything downstream is wrong too. Status (Available, In Use, In Maintenance) is visible before a technician can tap into it.
Step 2: Select Bio Simulator
Bio-simulators expire. Using one past its date invalidates the whole test. I disabled expired units in the list instead of hiding them, so a technician sees why something can’t be picked, not just that it’s gone. Up to two can be selected for redundancy, without turning the choice into a decision tree.
Step 3: Assign Seats (Equipment)
This step only pairs hardware to hardware. Bio-simulators and headphones to seats. No participants yet. I kept it separate from participant assignment on purpose. In the old interface those two jobs blurred together, and technicians lost track of which one they were actually doing.
Step 4: Calibration
Seats calibrate one by one or all together, each with its own progress state. A failed calibration on one seat doesn’t block the five working ones next to it. This is what “unifying calibration and seat assignment was operational, not aesthetic” actually means in practice. A technician can see every seat’s real state without leaving the screen.
Running the test: Hearing Test Management
Once calibrated, seats move into live testing. The dot-timeline per frequency, per ear, tells a technician how a test is going without opening individual results. A failed threshold shows up red, right there, instead of surfacing in a report after the fact. A seat with no participant assigned yet says so, instead of showing test data that isn’t real.
Assigning Seats to Participants
Two surfaces on purpose. A read-only strip for a glance at who’s where, and an editable, session-grouped table underneath for the actual work. In the original version both were editable and technicians didn’t know which one they were supposed to touch.
Information architecture
Proctor and technician flow, mapped before I opened Figma.
Business Impact
Business Impact
This redesign changed the speed and reliability of on-site hearing test operations across 20–50 technicians running sessions with up to 8 participants each.
Operational efficiency:
Session setup dropped from around 20 minutes to under 10, roughly a 50% reduction. For a technician running six to eight back-to-back sessions in a single site visit, that’s over an hour of recovered time per day. Either more sessions per visit, or an earlier wrap-up at client sites.
Error reduction:
Real-time calibration status per seat (Calibrated, Needs Calibration, Error) removed a class of silent failure where technicians would proceed without knowing a device was misconfigured. In occupational health, an invalid test isn’t a bad user experience. It’s a compliance problem.
Technician independence:
The step-by-step workflow ended the routine of new technicians needing a supervisor to help them through the fragmented UI. The flow guides itself now.
Scalability:
Participant management (collapsible seat sections, inline search, live status) handles anything from a 2-seat setup to a full 8-seat configuration without changing the interaction model. Same tool works across every client facility size, no retraining.
Legacy interface: baseline for the redesign
Fragmented login, workorder, and participant management. Session state was spread across disconnected screens with no unified calibration status. Technicians were holding context in short-term memory during live sessions. That’s what the redesign was solving for.
Login & Workorder Management:
Both local and cloud login. Technicians pull in workorders and start without setup friction.
Participant Onboarding & Test Monitoring:
Add participants, assign seats, track status in real time. Calibration indicators visible throughout so technicians always know where each seat stands.
Homescreen Data & Live Updates:
The home screen surfaces what matters. Active sessions, notifications, participant progress. Coordinators see what needs attention without digging.
Testing & Analytics
Multiple participants at once, per-participant progress, historical test data, all from the same view.
Final Designs
Rebuilt flows, cleaner order
Login, setup, testing. Each step in the right order, nothing where it wasn’t needed. Everything a technician needs to run a session sits in one place.
What I’d do Differently
Time-to-first-test-started per session, and calibration restart frequency. The design reduces obvious friction. Usage data is what tells you whether technicians are actually using the collapsed seat view or ignoring it.
The trade-off of adding navigation steps in exchange for clarity was the right call for experienced users. New-technician onboarding needs its own moderated session to confirm the guided flow doesn’t create anxiety on first exposure.
