DicomLab
UX / UI design
Stepping into digital dentistry in a safe, simple and effective way.
About
dicomLAB is a medical technology company developing digital systems and providing services that help dental surgeries to become more precise and predictable leading to a better patient care.
Among others, the company operates an online platform for dentists to plan implant cases for their patients in 3D and order surgical guides to perform oral surgeries accordingly.
The team
Dr. Endre Varga, Oral surgeon, CEO
László Késmárki, Head of Development
Melinda Berki, Product Owner
Réka Halász, Dental tech, Product Designer
The task
Improve the web-based platform and develop a new dental prosthetic service which allows dentists to plan and order dental restoration work from the laboratory online.
My role
Research, user experience design - user journeys, copywriting, wireframing; visual design - helping with the company’s rebranding; and professional contribution from a dental technician's perspective.
Goals
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Get existing customers to start ordering temporary prosthetics along with surgical guides from dicomLAB.
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Replace existing customers' choice of dental laboratory for producing all prosthetics regardless of it being an implant case or not.
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Gain new customers.
Research
We have gained insight through personal interviews with dentists and dental technicians to gather information on user needs. We found that use of the platform needed to be familiar to dentists for optimal user experience. Existing popular dental CAD softwares gave us an idea how this could be achieved.
Findings
Dental laboratories can’t produce prosthetics without the physical or digital models of the patient’s dentition and the exact location of the implants. This information is only available after the surgery.
When planning a surgery, dentists provide all the data of their patients to dicomLAB but then they have to do a separate round of imaging/impression taking for their own dental laboratories to produce prosthetics too. Hence recieving the surgical guide and the immediate temporary prosthetic at the same time is nearly never possible.
Surgical guides, implants, and tooth restorations arrive at the dental office at different times from different sources and dentists have to be in contact with multiple parties just to complete one patient's treatment. It is time consuming and ineffective.
Solution
A platform that combines implantology with dental prosthetic solutions. dicomLAB uses the digital information of the patients from their implant cases for designing and producing immediate and accurate tooth replacements. This way dentists only have to keep in contact with, provide imaging to and order from only one partner: dicomLAB.
Functionality
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Create a prosthetic case for patients or continue an existing implant case with prosthetics
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Upload files of the patient
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Communication with dicomLAB’s Helpdesk, Dental laboratory or Sales via chat instead of phone calls
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Review the restoration designs in 3D on the platform before accepting
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Download design files
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Order tracking and service rating
User flow
Our goal was consistency with dicomLAB's other user flows. The main feature, ‘Implantology’ is a step by step process, the wizard always asks a simple question to calculate the next steps. The ‘Prosthetics’ user flow is similar, we always ask for one information per screen. We wanted to define this feature as a whole product but also as a part of a system.
Wireframes
This step was essential in the design process. We frequently requested feedback from our team of dental technicians, laboratory owners and dentists and eventually went through multiple iterations.
Visual Design
Our next task was to give a makeover to dicomLAB’s logo and corporate identity.
The logomark represents a dental implant which has different blocks of blue imitating the looks of a polygon mesh to indicate 3D technology but they also can also be interpreted as the sharp edges of a titanium implant. I used a softer, rounded type to match the shape of the hole in the symbol which we can associate with holes in a surgical guide.
UI
Case creation
The process is similar to the completion of a worksheet at the dental office. I chose to use a design that translates this feeling of filling out a physical file. The workflow starts with the patient’s personal information and continues with dental status. For this we used a visual approach, users set the status and mark the desired prosthetics on a chart.
Prosthetic review
Once the digital designs are ready, the lab uploads them for the dentist to review.
The opacity of the 3D objects can be adjusted for better view. Dentists can download the files of the design, or, if necessary, they can upload additional files for the lab to work with. Communication between them is available through the chat.
Order tracking
After the design had been approved, the laboratory starts the production of dental prosthetics. Case information and status of the order can be tracked by the dentist. They get notifications of status changes on the platform and in email as well. After the case is completed, the dentist can review their experience with the services for valuable feedback for the company.
The prototype
