NexusForce · UX Research Phase 1
Stakeholder Interviews
Before designing anything, we talked to the people who live inside the problem. Four stakeholders. Four completely different relationships with compliance. One broken system holding them all back.
Gloria Dorsey
Client Executive · St. Mary's Hospital, SF
Hospital
Her goal
"I need to staff my ICU without ever wondering if the person treating my patients is actually qualified. That's not a preference. That's a legal requirement."
Questions we asked
Q1
Walk me through what happens when a travel nurse arrives on Day 1. What could go wrong?
Q2
Who is legally responsible if a nurse is working with an expired license?
Q3
How do you currently track whether compliance requirements are met?
Q4
What does the current handoff from the staffing agency look like to you?
Q5
If you could change one thing about how placements are verified, what would it be?
Key insights
Hospital bears full legal liability — even for agency-placed nurses treating their patients
Current process is email + spreadsheet — no real-time compliance visibility
She discovered expired licenses in post-incident audits — not before
Core tension
Needs nurses fast (ICU is understaffed) AND needs full compliance before Day 1. These two things were always in conflict.
Marcus Webb
Account Manager · HealthStaff Agency
Agency
His goal
"I need to close placements fast, keep both sides happy, and not get a call on a Friday morning saying a nurse showed up with missing documents."
Questions we asked
Q1
Describe a placement that went wrong because of a documentation issue. What happened?
Q2
How do you currently know if a candidate has the right documents for a specific job?
Q3
When the hospital sends you a requirements list, how do you check your nurses against it?
Q4
What happens to your relationship with the hospital when a compliance gap is discovered after placement?
Q5
How do you currently track document expiry for nurses on active placements?
Key insights
Submitted candidates blind — no system to cross-check wallet vs job requirements before sending
Gap discovery always post-selection — too late to prevent delay without damaging client trust
Tracked renewals in a personal spreadsheet that nobody else could see or update
Core tension
Responsible for both sides of the deal — but had no tool that showed him what each side needed from the other in real time.
Sarah M.
ICU Travel Nurse · Candidate
Candidate
Her goal
"I want to show up on Day 1 knowing everything is sorted. Not hoping. Not finding out at the reception desk. Just — knowing."
Questions we asked
Q1
Has a placement ever been delayed or cancelled because of a document issue? What happened?
Q2
When you start a new assignment, how do you know if your documents are in order?
Q3
How many times have you re-submitted the same document — BLS cert, TB test — for different placements?
Q4
What does it cost you — financially, emotionally — when a start date gets pushed back?
Q5
How do you currently track when your licenses and certifications are about to expire?
Key insights
Showed up to work in scrubs and was turned away — compliance gap nobody told her about
Re-submitted the same BLS certificate 4+ times in one year — no system remembered what was already approved
Tracked expiry dates in her phone calendar — first reminder she'd get was a coordinator panicking
Core tension
She has zero visibility into the process that determines whether she works or doesn't — and loses real income when it fails.
Platform Admin
NexusForce Operations · Compliance verification
Platform Ops
Their goal
"I need to verify that every document is real and current before a nurse touches a patient — and I need to prove that I did my job if anyone ever asks."
Questions we asked
Q1
Walk me through how you currently verify documents for a new placement from start to finish.
Q2
What does your current audit trail look like? If something went wrong, how would you prove what you verified?
Q3
How do you know when a document is about to expire on an active placement?
Q4
What are the most common document gaps you see? What causes them?
Q5
How do you communicate compliance status back to the hospital and the agency right now?
Key insights
No immutable audit trail — "approved" meant an email that could be lost or overwritten
Manually contacted both sides after verification — no system propagated status in real time
Expiry monitoring was reactive — discovered lapsed documents in compliance audits, not before
Core tension
Needed to be the source of truth for all four parties — but had no single system to track, verify, and prove what had been approved.
Where goals conflict
Tensions across stakeholders
⚡
Hospital needs nurses fast. Compliance needs time to verify. These were always in direct conflict.
⚡
Agency wants to close deals. Gaps slow deals down. So gaps got hidden until they couldn't be.
⚡
Nurse needs income. Compliance delays mean no income. But she had no visibility or control.
⚡
Admin needs accountability. But their verification had no permanent, tamper-proof record.
Where they agreed
Shared needs across all 4
✓
Everyone wanted to know exactly what was missing — not vague "some documents are needed."
✓
Everyone wanted proactive alerts — not to find out problems after they'd already caused damage.
✓
Everyone needed one source of truth — not four people maintaining four separate spreadsheets.
✓
Everyone needed the process to be impossible to skip — not reliant on someone remembering.
The insight that changed everything
The real problem wasn't compliance
🎯
The compliance check was happening after the placement decision — not before activation. Every stakeholder assumed someone else had verified it. Nobody had a gate.
🔒
This led to the core design decision: make non-compliant placements structurally impossible to create. Not a reminder. A gate.
📐
This is the insight behind the Snapshot Rule, Immutability Rule, and Union Rule — the three structural decisions that NexusForce is built on.