BostonSight Fitconnect App

Ditching the instruction manual

We took a consumer-oriented approach to make a complex platform simple.

  • Alignment Workshop

    We bring stakeholders together in structured, facilitated sessions that are SWOT-like in spirit. Together we surface priorities, work through disagreement in the room and land on a shared path forward.

  • Competitive Analysis

    We study your competitors and the best practices beyond your category to establish the baseline users expect, and to find the openings that let you differentiate.

  • Taxonomy

    Using a mix of open and closed card sorting, tree testing, and first-click studies, we build an information architecture people can navigate with confidence.

  • Accessibility

    We design with the highest accessibility standards in mind, hand off with clear direction for development, and validate the result through rigorous audits against WCAG and ADA standards. Compliance is proven, not assumed.

  • Experience Strategy

    We evaluate internal perceptions, user goals, and best practices to find what makes your experience worth having. Then we turn it into an action plan for what comes next.

  • Sketches

    When it comes to bringing ideas to life, the pencil is mightier than the keyboard. And much faster.

  • Prototyping

    If a picture is a thousand words, a high-fidelity prototype is the entire story. Testing with one gets us past hypothetical reactions and into real behavior, the kind of feedback we can actually trust. With AI-assisted prototypes, we go even deeper, real data, real interactions, insight we couldn’t get any other way.

  • Visual Design

    Through imagery, messaging, color and typography, we deliberate over pixels, consistency, readability, contrast, accessibility and creativity.

  • Design Systems

    A design system is what makes consistency survive growth: a shared language everyone builds from, not a set of rules only one person remembers. We deliver it in Figma and Markdown, built to evolve as your product does.

  • Usability Testing

    We ride-along as users navigate digital experiences while trying to achieve their goals. Sometimes we ask probing questions. Sometimes we just observe. Unearthing friction early costs a conversation. Catching it later could cost the business.

  • Design Handoff

    Final screens, specifications, documentation, and content assets—organized in Figma and AI-ready Markdown so both your developers and their coding tools can move seamlessly from design to build.

The Challenge

Soft contact lenses are great for most people, but they aren’t for everyone. For those with hard-to-fit eyes, astigmatism, severe dry eye, or other conditions, scleral lenses are a wonderful alternative. Customizing sizes and lens configurations, however, that ain’t easy.

BostonSight developed a web platform called FitConnect that allowed optometrists to order custom scleral lenses with a variety of parameters and settings. The early versions of the platform were functional—as long as you were ready to wade through the application’s hefty documentation and get trained on its use. As BostonSight’s customer base grew, they realized they had to fix the user experience if their business was going to be a success.

A practitioner dashboard was created to put the most important information and tools at the doctors fingertips
A practitioner dashboard was created to put the most important information and tools at the doctors fingertips

Our Approach

To help modernize the FitConnect application, ZeroDegrees evaluated usability, revamped the information architecture, updated the visual design, and helped raise the findability of key value-added features. 

And, of course, we talked to customers. From their perspective, it was clear that we should “make it like any other shopping site”. A physician ordering highly customized contact lenses is certainly different than buying a T-shirt. But just because this was a B2B site doesn’t mean it had to behave like one.

Well organized step-by-step process that guides practitioners through selecting, customizing and ordering a new lens
Well organized step-by-step process that guides practitioners through selecting, customizing and ordering a new lens

To meet deadlines and goals for site development, we needed to be as efficient as possible with design activities. Because FitConnect is an application for a specific audience, we prioritized usability testing and feedback from optometrists. We paired that with design workshops and design best practices to help BostonSight’s UX vision come clearly into focus.

A clearer patient view to aid in tracking their order history and past fittings, with easy access to create a new lens
A clearer patient view to aid in tracking their order history and past fittings, with easy access to create a new lens

The Results

When we tested the design solution, users had a lot to say about the results. Here are a few nuggets from the feedback sessions:

“This feels really smooth and easy. I like that there are some tips that are available too. I feel like the whole thing got moved forward ten years.”

“I am confident that I could maneuver through here very easily. I don’t see myself as having issues where I would get stuck and have to call consultation. I could do this easily.”

And the product stakeholders were happy, too:

Everyone is thrilled with the new design

…and the efficiencies it will create not only for our external customers but also our internal stakeholders. The new order flow is fantastic! We greatly appreciate your expertise on bringing our functional application to a modern, sleek design that highlights the functionality of FitConnect and capabilities of BostonSight.

Sara Yost, Chief executive officer, Bostonsight