Amanda Poirier
CASE STUDY · HEARTSPRING · OCT 5, 2026
My role
Experience Design and Activation Lead (sole designer). I led research, synthesis, facilitation, and the roadmap.
Partners
Outpatient clinic manager, clinic director, scheduling team, IT/web, marketing
Timeline
August 2026 to present. Full rollout expected over about 12 months.
Methods
Secondary research, stakeholder interviews, empathy map, persona, journey map, impact/effort prioritization workshop, service blueprint
Status
In progress. Six quick wins ready to start now; two bundles tied to the new practice management platform (Motivity).
FAMILY JOURNEY OR WAITLIST EXPERIENCE VISUAL
CONTEXT
Heartspring is a Wichita nonprofit serving children with special needs and their families. Its outpatient clinic offers ABA therapy, along with OT, PT, and speech. Demand for ABA far outpaces capacity: about 180 families are on the list, and the typical wait is around 18 months.
Even the 180 is a guess. Nobody checks in with waiting families, so the clinic can’t tell who has started services elsewhere or no longer needs a spot. Meanwhile, local competitors advertise “no waitlist” starts.
I joined Heartspring in mid-2026 as its first and only experience designer. The waitlist was the first design challenge I took on.
~180
families on the list
~18 mo
typical wait for ABA
20 days
longest wait for a callback
THE PROBLEM
A family’s experience with Heartspring often starts with waiting just to hear back. Web inquiries can go up to 20 days without a return call. After that, families get zero proactive contact from us. If they want an update, they have to call, and that return call can take days too.
The paperwork made it worse. Schedulers sent the full intake packet, medical history included, at the start. By the time a spot opened 18 months later, most of those forms had expired, so families filled them out a second time.
The silence costs the organization too:
Lost families
A family who waits 20 days for a callback, or never hears from us, is more likely to accept a “no waitlist” offer from a competitor. One ABA client is worth roughly $54,000 a year in services.
A list nobody trusts
Without check-ins, staff can’t tell who is still waiting. When a slot opens, finding a ready family can take two weeks, and each week a 20-hour slot sits empty is about $1,300 in services that can’t be billed.
Wasted staff time
“Am I still on the list?” calls and paperwork that has to be redone pull staff away from other work.
Revenue figures are directional estimates based on 2026 KanCare rates, not finance-approved numbers.
THE PROCESS
As a team of one, I had to get to useful insight fast without adding to clinic staff workloads. I focused on understanding the system from both directions: what families go through, and what the clinic does (or doesn’t do) behind the scenes.
Secondary research
I studied how waitlists work for residential placement, outpatient therapy, and medical specialists. I wanted to see what good communication looks like when the wait itself can’t be fixed.
Stakeholder interviews
I talked with the outpatient clinic manager and the clinic director. They explained how families move from inquiry to first appointment, where handoffs break down, and what they’d already tried.
Empathy map and journey map
I mapped the family’s experience from first inquiry to first session. The journey map made the gap visible: a long stretch of nothing between “you’re on the list” and “a spot opened.”
Prioritization workshop
In a working session with the clinic manager, we generated ideas and scored them on an impact/effort matrix. I then grouped the results into nine bundles and assigned each a value case, an owner, and a next step.
Service blueprint
I’m mapping the ideal end-to-end experience, including the staff actions, systems, and policies behind each family touchpoint.
SERVICE BLUEPRINT
The ideal waitlist journey, with the staff actions, systems, and policies behind every family touchpoint. Click to enlarge.
Download PDF
IMPACT / EFFORT MATRIX FROM THE WORKSHOP
THE INSIGHT
Everyone, me included, started from the assumption that the problem was the length of the wait. Of course we’d shorten it if we could. But capacity is set by staffing and funding, which design can’t change quickly.
The research pointed somewhere else. The wait frustrates families, but what builds or breaks their trust is what happens between being added to the list and starting services. Do they know they’re on it? Do they know what comes next? Does anyone reach out, or do they have to chase us?
BEFORE
How do we shorten the wait?
AFTER
How might we make an 18-month wait feel cared for?
The reframe also made the problem solvable. Most of the fixes are communication and process changes the clinic controls today.
THE HARDEST PART
The design work was the easier part. The bigger challenge was getting three groups, each in a different place, to see the value in changing.
The clinic manager: a partner from day one
The manager was new and eager for change, so we co-led the prioritization work. Each bundle in the plan has a manager-owned next step, which keeps it moving without me.
The clinic director: prove value, don’t point out problems
The director had been in the role about a year and already saw changes needed across the whole clinic, not just the waitlist. A new design team listing problems she already knew would have cost credibility. So I set out to give her something she didn’t have yet: a clear value case for each change, in dollars and in family outcomes, and a phased plan she could act on.
The schedulers: changing habits I didn’t design
The scheduling team had the most day-to-day influence on families and the most resistance. Through the clinic manager, I learned they didn’t see why sending forms twice mattered to parents. They also questioned why they should follow up with families during a long wait. I didn’t treat this as a people problem. It showed that the current process gave staff no reason, time, or tools to stay in touch. The plan responds with standards, scripts, and templates that make good contact the easy default, plus automation later so it doesn’t depend on one person’s goodwill.
THE PLAN
The workshop produced nine bundles of changes. I phased them by what the clinic could do without waiting on anyone, so families feel a difference long before new technology arrives.
NOW
Quick wins
Six changes that only need process updates and templates.
WITH MOTIVITY
Staying in touch
Automated check-ins tied to the new practice management platform, in trial through mid-October.
PARKED
Crisis parent training
On hold until the clinic sets fair criteria for who gets it.
The quick wins only need process changes and templates. The “staying in touch” bundle depends on the clinic’s new practice management platform, Motivity, which is in trial through mid-October. I wrote a set of feasibility questions to test during the trial, so tool decisions follow the experience we want instead of the other way around. One idea, offering parent training to families in crisis while they wait, is parked until the clinic sets fair criteria for who gets it.
PHASED ROADMAP AND SERVICE BLUEPRINT
WHERE IT STANDS
The project is in its first implementation phase. The prioritized plan goes to a review meeting on October 13, and the quick wins are ready to start. The clinic is testing whether Motivity can support automated check-ins during its trial.
WHAT HAS ALREADY CHANGED
The clinic now has a shared, prioritized plan with owners and next steps, instead of a known problem with no path forward. Each change also has a value case leadership can act on.
I’m tracking these measures, starting with a baseline now:
Measure
Baseline (Oct 2026)
Target
Result
Days from inquiry to first contact
Up to 20 days
72 hours
[TBD]
Families confirmed active on the list
Unknown (about 180 listed)
[TBD]
[TBD]
Time to fill an open ABA slot
Up to 2 weeks
[TBD]
[TBD]
Families filling out forms twice
Every family
None
[TBD]
Social club signups per round
0 and 2 (minimum is 4)
4+ per club
[TBD]
“Am I on the list?” calls
[Count if possible]
[TBD]
[TBD]
Family trust or satisfaction while waiting
[Survey not yet run]
[TBD]
[TBD]
REFLECTION
The most useful thing I did was question the brief.
“Shorten the wait” was a problem nobody in the room could solve. “Stop the silence” was one we could start on the next Monday.
I also learned that in a small organization, service design is mostly change management. The family-facing fixes are simple. Getting the people behind them to adopt them is the real work, and that means meeting each group where it is.
If I did it again, I’d talk to families and schedulers directly, earlier. Both perspectives came to me secondhand, and hearing from them firsthand would make the case stronger.