fastdesign.io is used by dental offices to design dental restorations for their patients. With many of the features used in dental lab software such as automatic margin marking, AI optimized workflow and tools for editing restorations, fastdesign.io gives dental offices the ability to design lab quality restorations for patients.

The previous versions of fastdesign.io were based on the dental lab version of fastdesign and were not created with the dental office in mind. This redesign opportunity gave our team the chance to create an experience that was tailored to our customers to use in a dental office setting. Ultimately, the main challenge was to understand what our customers pain points were with the existing software while creating a new experience that address these pain points.

As the designer for this project, I lead the redesign of fastdesign.io and was able to improve the overall user experience by reducing the time it took our customers to complete restoration designs, improving how widgets and view controls are presented, and creating an easier to understand workflow.

We kicked off the design process with a workshop to find out which areas of the application we want to focus on improving. With a team that consisted of designer, product managers, and customer support we discussed and analyzed feedback we received from our customers regarding improvements they'd like to see as well as future features they would like added. Our customer support team gave us insights into what the most common issues customers would call about. This lead us to identifying three key areas that we would focus our redesign efforts on.

Our interface for designing restorations had become cluttered with too many widgets and icons taking up valuable screen real estate. The interface was not created with the flexibility to support the number of widgets we were developing for the software. This lead to not only clutter, but also an inconsistent interface where some widgets would show on certain steps but not for others.

Our workflow for designing restorations needed to be optimized not only to improved speed, but also to support different workflows. When new steps are introduced in the design process, they would interfere with the linear workflow of the case causing a disjointed process.

The controls for that were used for viewing models on screen were often confusing and complicated for our users. We had 3 view states for any item shown on screen: show, hide, and transparent. Each of these states are activated by different clicks clicking on the item in the tooth chart on the interface. Restorations for a single tooth could have at minimum 3 clickable areas as well (restoration, prep area, and the jaw).

After identifying our goals and focus points for the redesign, we brought our team back together to brainstorm some ideas. We gathered multiple ideas and eventually broke them down into a focused concept.

Our concept was focused on a quick 3-step process to creating a restoration. In addition to a quicker design workflow, we also wanted relevant information such as Patient Information, Tooth Number, and Current Step to be easily seen and acted upon.

One of the key requests from our customers was to decrease the steps needed for them to design a restoration. We looked at different approaches to speed up the design process while also giving flexibility to the workflow. The design workflow for our users was a predetermined step-by-step process that made it very difficult for adjustments to be made later on in the process. We decided to group the workflow into 3 "steps" that users could work in and would be free to make any adjustment within that "step".

As part of our brainstorming process, we had all of the designers on the team create wireframe concepts that incorporated our solutions. These wireframes were presented by team members and critiqued.

To make the learning curve easier, we standardized the placement of controls. The placement of Widgets and Tools are located on the left, View controls on the right, and case information located on the bottom. The placement of these controls stay the same regardless of design step.

All tools previously were grouped together and there was no way to visually separate them.

Tools: When activated, tools change the way models are manipulated.

Widgets: When activated, widgets will show a panel with additional options.
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We focused on improving visibility though identifying which icons were used for tools and which were for widgets. Since tools and widgets could both be activated at the same time, we used the icons to show active and disabled states.

The two major changes we made to the workflow process was to simplify the design process and introduce the Guidance Bar. The design process for creating restoration was simplified into 3 main steps: Margin, Design, and Mill. The Guidance Bar was introduced as a to answer these questions:

What step am I on?

What should I do on this step?

Where should I go next?