Product Design Lead
THE ROLE
Karuna Health
San Francisco, CA
2019 - 2020
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Designed web, mobile, and voice experiences for enterprise healthcare users
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Leveraged research and data to deliver high value, succinct solutions to complex user flows
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Built a design system to streamline the UX design process and engineering
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Inspired a user centric, design-led product development process for a mission-driven team
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Collaborated on and designed a variety of content (HTML email templates, responsive websites, case studies, user incentives, slide decks, and conference/sales material)
PROJECTS
Overview
Karuna Health builds patient engagement software for care management agencies and healthcare providers. I joined Karuna in June 2019 when the company had one customer, about a dozen users, and a very early product designed by a few contractors. I was tasked with establishing a design system to lead future development of our web app and an all-new mobile app.
Over the course of the year, I led an incremental redesign of the end to end UX while crafting dozens of new features and a comprehensive design system to streamline design and engineering. Like many early stage startups, my role quickly broadened to support web design for our landing page and content design for marketing, sales, and user support. Today, Karuna's products are enabling care managers to reach thousands of patients at ease.
Check out my case study:
Karuna (web | desktop)
Karuna is a collaborative inbox helping care management agencies streamline patient communication and documentation while maintaining HIPAA compliance.
Care managers use Karuna to exchange text messages and place phone calls via a shared phone number. For patients, accessing care should be as simple as texting a friend. With integrated automated outreach workflows, handoff between live care managers and automated messaging was a key design challenge.
User Insight
Care managers have a tough job, limited resources and training, and in some cases, low wages. The patients they're responsible for are often high risk and from low income areas.
Simultaneously delivering an effective, intuitive experience to both user segments required a deep understanding of each user's unique challenges and workflows.
Designing enterprise healthcare products required careful navigation around complex regulations as outlined by HIPAA, the TCPA, and local call recording laws. User flows that should be pretty simple or straightforward required some complicated mapping and stringent security protocols.
Reflections
Karuna helped push the boundaries of what I can achieve as a UX designer. As an enterprise application with an ever-growing feature set and complex user flows, establishing a design system to streamline the design and engineering of new features was critical. Combined with a Material Design philosophy, I was able to spend less time creating radically new interfaces and more time optimizing the user journey and overall usability. Today, Karuna is connecting care managers with thousands of patients at ease.
Check out my case study:
Karuna Mobile
When I joined Karuna, the mobile app had already been designed, including a patient list and a conversation.
I collaborated with a UX engineer to fine tune the go-to-market UX/UI. In the coming months I worked to establish a mobile design system based off many of the designs we created together.
With a mobile design system in place, I was able to leverage shared components and interfaces to streamline future interfaces. Like in our desktop product, we leveraged standard form components to optimize usability and minimize engineering scope.
User Insight
Karuna Mobile is used by field-based case workers that regularly visit patients onsite. Although usability was necessary for initial adoption, user researched proved reliability and performance were most important for retention.
Though I was able to leverage iOS & Material Design components to build most of the Karuna Mobile interfaces, integrating secondary contacts (such as family members, caregivers, etc.) was quite a design challenge for a mobile device.
Through some internal A/B testing and several iterations, I finally arrived at the above layout for the patient name and secondary contact name. I wanted to ensure clarity for the user around with whom they were communicating with and the associated patient.
Reflections
Karuna Mobile is a key differentiator for the company in the patient engagement market. The mobile product available today will only serve as a foundation for a robust, mobile patient engagement tool in the future. I'm proud of the design system I helped create but I'm even more excited to see this product grow into something great.
meetKaruna.com
Prior to joining Karuna, designers created mockups of the company's landing page before it was passed to engineering for implementation. With a small engineering team and an ever growing backlog of product work, I suggested we explore alternate options so I can design and build the site myself; not only would it be more efficient for us, but it enabled to spend more time researching and understanding the broader market and positioning.
I leveraged Wordpress and an interface builder called Divi to create an all-new landing page. But like I would designing any experience, I started by taking time to understand the users of the site and the key information they were seeking. I worked with sales & marketing to develop an architecture that could easily grow and adapt in the future as we added more content to the site.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, I quickly worked with marketing to craft a unique landing page that more directly addressed the immediate needs of potential customers.
Reporting and
Email Communication
To ensure a consistent end to end user experience, I was responsible for the design of our system generated user emails and customer reporting products. I leveraged an HTML email builder called Mail Designer Pro to create the content, working with engineering to input user variables.
Email notifications became an important part to our user experience. Initially, users were only alerted of new messages when signed into the app. Researched show this was insufficient. After interviews and additional discovery, I crafted the concept of the Daily Digest to provide a summary each morning of any missed activity. Soon after, users wanted emails for each new message sent.
Though the current notification upon my exit met some of these key needs, additional notification options are still necessary.
User and team activity reports were emailed on a daily or weekly basis. I worked with our customer and product tea to highlight the key metrics while delivering detailed user activity.
Karuna Content
By taking over the design of all external sales, marketing, and user content, I had the opportunity to help create synergy between what we're pitching customers and implementing in the product. In addition, designing Karuna's content helped me better empathize with our users and key stakeholders in our customer organizations, leading to even more intentional product design.
I worked with each team to discover the audience and positioning required. After additional mockup design or research, I worked to assemble the information hierarchies, key storylines, and initial layouts.
Though I often led or helped facilitate the process, content creation at Karuna was incredibly collaborative. I'd solicit feedback and input from multiple team members throughout the entire design process. Together, we created a workflow that enabled us to deliver powerful, effective pieces.
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