In 2021, a team at Cityblock ideated on the first version of Commons Companion in a hackathon. At the time, they named it 'Sidecar' and even though it was rebranded to 'Companion,' some people at the company could never fully transition to the new name.

When I joined Cityblock, the idea had existed, but the designs were not final and my team did not have a prioritized roadmap on what to do first for the Companion. It wasn't fully validated yet either. We just knew it was a potential solution to a problem that existed for our providers.

I talk about the roadmap and some of the features we implemented in the Commons Companion in this case study. Please read it if you are interested in learning more.

For this case study, I'll focus on how we transitioned from 1.0 to 2.0 when Cityblock transitioned EHRs from Elation to Athena. We implemented all of our technical and user experience learnings from the past 1.5 years of working on 1.0 to create a better 2.0 for our users.

The first version of Commons Companion in Elation poses usability challenges as it requires excessive clicks to access and close information, occupies a substantial portion of the screen real estate, and obstructs access to essential buttons within the EHR. This product problem arises from the conflicting user experience, where the valuable information provided by Commons Companion is overshadowed by the friction and frustration caused by its functionality.

This problem holds significance since the valuable information delivered through Commons Companion aligns with users' workflow needs. However, the tool itself introduces user friction and frustration, hindering productivity.

[change]

[change]

[change]

[change]

We only launched Commons Companion 2.0 in Athena for all our providers in June 2023, so we have not tracked and finalized our data yet.

[change]