Role: UX Design, research through prototyping
Focus: Connected care platform for chronic pain patients and their providers
Deliverables: Research workshop, current and future-state journey maps, an animated future-state prototype, dual patient/provider interface design
At a glance:
Interviewed 3 chronic pain patients and 3 physicians directly, not through surveys
Mapped the current and future state of care, then animated the future state as a working prototype
Designed two linked interfaces around one shared source of truth: a patient app and a provider dashboard
Video consults rated 4.7/5, 90% said the app worked well, 85% would recommend it
The design was absorbed into an existing telehealth platform rather than asking patients or doctors to adopt a new one
The Problem
Chronic pain and opioid dependence share the same starting point: a healthcare system that works fine inside the exam room and falls apart the moment the patient leaves it. The doctor has no visibility into what happens at home. The patient has no clear plan for what to do between visits. That gap, not the appointment itself, is where people get lost.
The brief wasn't "build a better patient app." It was closing that specific gap, keeping patient and provider connected across the full arc of care, without asking either of them to adopt something new on top of everything they already manage.
The Research
I brought six people into a room: three patients living with chronic pain, three physicians treating it. Real interviews, not a survey sent out afterward. The kind where you ask someone to walk you through an actual Tuesday and you just listen.
What came back was specific in a way assumptions never are. Patients described what pain actually looks like mid-afternoon, what makes them decide to take medication versus wait it out, and exactly where they lose track of their own care plan. Physicians described making real decisions in a five-minute visit with almost no information about what had happened since the last one.
The personas and pain points I'd mapped beforehand held up against what I heard in that room. That's the only kind of validation that actually counts, the kind where you're prepared to find out you were wrong and you weren't.
Mapping the Gap
From those conversations, I built a full current-state journey map: every step from a patient deciding to call their doctor through the day after the appointment, with every point marked where information dropped, where a patient was left guessing, or where a provider was making a call without data they should have had.
That map became the argument for everything that came after it. Not a deliverable to file away, the actual case for the design.
The Design Decision
The core idea is simple to say and harder to build: the doctor directs care, the patient follows it, and both of them can see the same reality at the same time. Three things had to work together to make that true.
The provider sets and adjusts the care plan, and sees whether a patient is keeping up with it or falling behind, without that visibility costing them extra work on top of an already full day. The patient gets clarity on what to do and when, with reminders and progress tracking that feed straight back to their provider the moment something's completed. And both sides get something worth returning to. Patients can see their own progress accumulate. Providers get real data instead of a five-minute recap. That mutual payoff is what makes people keep using something past the first week, not a reminder notification alone.
The actual target wasn't adherence. It was making a patient feel like someone is paying attention between visits, because that feeling is what keeps chronic pain from turning into isolation, and isolation is where dependence takes root.
The Future State
Today, the patient and the provider live in two separate information worlds. The provider knows what happened in the room. The patient knows everything that happened before and after it. Neither side sees the other's half.
I animated the future-state journey map to show what closing that gap would actually feel like in motion, not just describe it as a diagram. Built in Illustrator and After Effects.
The Flow
The Results
The interface tested well enough that people could use it without training, which mattered less to me than the specific feedback underneath that top-line result. Chat with providers rated 4.5 out of 5. Video consults rated 4.7 out of 5, described as smooth with low lag. Appointment scheduling rated 4.3 out of 5, and the reminders attached to it measurably cut missed appointments, a detail that sounds small until you remember how much chronic care management fails specifically because people miss the next visit.
Ninety percent said the app worked well for them. Eighty-five percent said they'd recommend it. The quotes behind those numbers were as specific as the workshop conversations that started the project:
"I love how easy it is to chat with my doctor," from a patient for whom the barrier to reaching their provider had simply gone away. "The video consultations feel just like being in the doctor's office," convenience without losing the clinical feeling that makes people trust a visit. "I appreciate the reminders for my upcoming appointments," someone naming, directly, the exact kind of support they'd needed.
Not every signal was a win. Some users asked for more personalization, custom notifications, more tailored health resources, and that's a fair, real request I didn't fully solve in this pass.
The strongest signal, though, wasn't a rating at all. When it came time to deploy, the chat and video features were integrated directly into the telehealth platform patients and providers already used. No new app to learn, no second login. The best evidence the design worked is that it didn't ask anyone to notice it as something new.
What I'd Tell the Next Person Doing This
Six people in a room taught me more than a wider survey would have. The number that mattered wasn't how many people we talked to, it was whether the design decisions I made afterward held up against what I'd actually heard, and they did, because I built the personas from the same room I later tested them against. That discipline, not skipping ahead to solutions before finishing the listening, is the one thing I'd insist on repeating exactly the same way next time.