Quarterly Updates

Background

Denver Health clinicians worked inside a constant stream of emails, handouts, policy notices, and software alerts. Epic's quarterly releases introduced many changes at once, but only a portion of them materially affected any given specialty. Another conventional institutional document—even an accurate one—was easy to ignore.

The project grew from the same problem I addressed with the New Resident Epic Guide: how do you make necessary technical information useful to people whose attention is already spoken for?

Purpose

The updates needed to identify the changes most likely to affect clinical work, explain those changes clearly, and make the document recognizable enough that providers would actually pick it up. The goal was not novelty for its own sake. Distinctive design was part of the information architecture: a signal that this communication had been edited for the reader rather than merely sent to them.

Process

I worked with Denver Health's Chief Medical Information Officer and chief residents in different specialties to select the updates that mattered most. That editorial collaboration kept each guide focused on clinical consequences rather than the full software release.

I organized the selected changes into a concise hierarchy, rewrote technical material in direct language, and used image, typography, humor, and visual pacing to make the guides easier to enter and remember. Like the pocket guides, the documents needed to be functional at first glance and rewarding enough to survive a second look.

The format continued my broader practice of making communication clear without making it generic. Each issue belonged to the same family but had enough visual variation to feel made rather than generated.

Outcome

The recurring format made quarterly changes easier to find, scan, and remember. It gave clinical and technical leaders a disciplined way to decide what deserved attention and gave providers a communication artifact designed around the reality of their work.

The work improved my collaboration with the Chief Medical Information Officer and chief residents across specialties. Providers also offered verbal and emailed feedback that they appreciated the updates' design.

The visual experimentation fed directly into my weekly Epic communications and eventually into the artwork exhibited as This Is NOT Epic.

Key Learnings

Editorial judgment is part of learning design. When attention is scarce, choosing what not to include is as consequential as explaining what remains.

Clarity and personality are not opposites. A document can be accurate, skimmable, visually strange, and professionally useful at the same time—provided the design remains subordinate to the reader's task.