How might we envision an ecosystem of eye-care devices while developing and de-risking new technologies?
Alcon Vision Suite
Next-generation surgical suite journey refresh (NGSS)
Client: Alcon
Year: 2017 - 2022
Project Type: Service Design, UX/UI Design, Experience Design
My role: Project director guiding design team and leading end-to-end engagement across research, journey mapping, co-design workshops, and experience strategy. Over a 5 year period I led and oversaw 8 engagements spanning 6 design disciplines and 28+ contributors over 5 locations from the Philips global design function.
The Challenge
Starting from a fragmented experience and device landscape, Alcon came to Philips’ Design team to help envision and design their E2E next-generation “Unity” surgical suite ecosystem. Data from diagnostic devices were disconnected, new R&D efforts were underway, and they had limited internal design resources.
This program evolved into a multi-year consulting relationship of over $2M in consulting revenue that strengthened the Philips + Alcon cloud services partnership, leveraged Philips global design team capabilities to broaden the scope of our consulting team, and enhanced quality and UX across a suite of complex medical devices; de-risking a first-of-kind diagnostic device and harmonizing the design language across the ecosystem.
The Approach
Given the significant changes in technologies and internal strategy evolution at Alcon since the original NGSS vision was defined in 2017, we needed to validate the relevance of certain key features of the ecosystem and determine the viability and technical requirements of the system.
To do that, we conducted rapid, robust field research during discovery and emphasized the framing phase in the scope, where challenges were defined and device and data-flow requirements were highlighted.
Lastly, the build phase defined 18 solutions and the most significant impact areas for teams to focus on moving forward.
Overview of phases and activities in the four-month long NGSS journey refresh I led in 2022, five years after the original vision was created.
The "original" 2017 NGSS ecosystem map served as a North Star vision for Alcon, and guided subsequent device and application development across the surgical suite.
In 2022, five years after the original NGSS journey map was done, a "refresh" was requested as technologies, acquisitions, and market needs had evolved. A Current State audit mapped user and data challenges.
Following the Current State map, an updated Future State journey was built off of updated user requirements, data, and clinical needs to guide product development teams.
A deep dive into devices, services, and data flows ensured appropriate connectivity levels across the federated ecosystem.
A service blueprint for the first-of-kind Capella diagnostic device was designed concurrently with the NGSS ecosystem work, driving UX/UI design decisions.
How we framed it
A sampling of some of the activities and artifacts created along the way during the project. Close collaboration and coordination was required across multiple teams.
Input from worksessions with Clinical Application Specialists were synthesized to include in future state maps.
Emergent themes from user research were used to influence leadership decision making.
Example insight and recommendation.
A "Horizons" framework was used to roadmap what connectivity means and drive product requirements across teams
Jobs-to-be-done and user requirements were aggregated across touchpoints.
Example of user/data needs mapping.
What Changed
A clear signal that a project has lasting value is a client who returns to it. Five years after the original NGSS vision was created in 2017, Alcon came back to refresh it because the ecosystem it described had changed significantly. New acquisitions, evolved technologies, and a shifting market had transformed the landscape the original map was built to guide.
That return engagement is an outcome I point to most often when talking about this program, and the value of service design more broadly. It reflects both the durability of the original work and the depth of the trust relationship built across eight projects and a multi-year consulting engagement totaling more than $2M.
$2M+
Consulting program across 8 projects over 5 years
5 yrs.
Client returned to refresh original journey framework
Following the NGSS refresh, a Design Language System project formalized what the journey work had made visible: translating experience principles into consistent UI standards, interaction patterns, and brand expression across the full Alcon device and software ecosystem. Where the journey maps defined what the experience should feel like for surgeons and clinical staff, the DLS defined how every interface element would express it. Together they gave Alcon's global product teams a shared design language that could scale across hardware and software, clinic and operating room.