Product design · 02 · Prexy

Simplifying funeral operations without losing a single field

Prexy runs a funeral home end to end: services, embalming, billing, accounting, branches and cemeteries. I redesigned two of its modules so long technical forms would feel simple to fill in.

A funeral service can’t be half saved

Funeral homes run processes that can’t fail: services, members, inventory, payments and legal documents, all under time pressure and with sensitive data. Much of it still ran on paper or on generic tools never built for the industry.

Every field matters, from the requester’s name to the technical detail of a procedure. The challenge wasn’t cutting information; it was ordering it so nobody got lost or skipped a step, without the process feeling endless.

The hardest module: embalming

This form records the whole technical preservation procedure: what was done, with what, how much and with what result. Before, everything lived in one long view (general condition, face, autopsy, preservation and cosmetics) with no sign of where the embalmer was in the process or what was left to complete. The cognitive load was so high it felt like a paper form you fill in by hand.

Most people in that role are older, used to doing everything on paper and not very comfortable with technology. So the goal was for them to always know where they stood: what they’d done, what was left and which step they were on, with a fluid interaction that wouldn’t punish a mistake.

Previous embalming form: every section in one long view — Before

Redesigned form: six steps with status and a progress panel — After

Key decisions

Decision	What we did	Why
Split it to move forward	A 6-step wizard where each step shows its status: done, in progress or pending	One long single-view form felt like an impossible task
Progress, always visible	A progress bar and live percentage	People no longer had to guess how much was left while scrolling
Only show what applies	Conditional fields: "Yes" reveals sub-fields, "No" closes the question	No empty fields, no extra clicks
Fewer clicks, same data	The same information with as few interactions as possible	Not a single required field was removed

Redesigned form: a greeting to the embalmer, six steps with their status, done or pending, the progress bar at 64% and the progress panel — Every step shows its status and progress reads as a percentage

Progress panel at two moments: at 0% with the first step active, and at 48% with three steps done and the fourth in progress — Progress panel: at the start and halfway through

Second module: reports

The reports module started blank: an empty state with a single button to build a report from scratch. The redesign offers two paths: build a custom report by picking the KPIs that matter, or start fast from preset funeral templates for monthly sales, embalming operations or inventory control.

Previous reports module: an empty state with a single create-report button — Before

Redesigned reports module: build a custom report or use a funeral template — After

The idea was to let service coordinators start from templates set up with the criteria most used across services, instead of facing a blank screen. Building a custom report stayed available for anyone who needs something different.

Outcome

Prexy is piloting with funeral homes nationwide and launches with six modules: Services, Embalming, Billing, Accounting, Branches and Cemeteries.

Here’s how I’d measure the pilot’s success:

Time to complete an embalming record, compared to the previous form.
Records abandoned or submitted with missing fields.
How many coordinators start from a template versus building a custom report.

What I’d do differently

I’d test the form with embalmers in their real work setting before locking the design. For people with little digital experience, what works on a design screen doesn’t always work in the preparation room.

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