Background

I joined HealthRhythms in April 2022 as the first designer on the team. At that time, the product was a minimal, engineer-led solution designed primarily to support clinical trial customers.

As the company evolved, so did its vision. The focus expanded from serving clinical research partners to developing solutions for direct-to-consumer use, while also exploring integrations with healthcare systems. This shift required rethinking the product experience to meet the needs of a broader and more diverse user base.

The Problem Space

Access to mental health care is limited, with millions facing long wait times due to provider shortages and outdated, manual processes. As mental health diagnoses continue to rise, many people are left without timely, objective support. Our goal was to design a solution that makes mental health monitoring easier, more accessible, and driven by meaningful data.

Our Goals

Design a solution that reduces the effort required to detect, monitor, and support mental health conditions by:

• Using passive behavioral data to provide continuous, objective insights

• Supporting early detection and intervention through predictive analytics

• Creating user experiences that are intuitive, engaging, and accessible across different contexts

Key Obstacles

• Business Challenges:

  • Slow adoption rates due to user resistance to change

  • Navigating complex compliance and privacy requirements in healthcare

• Design Challenges:

  • As the first and only designer, I was responsible for establishing design practices, advocating for user-centered approaches, and embedding design thinking within a predominantly technical and clinical team

  • Serving multiple user types (patients, clinicians, researchers) across varied environments, often with limited resources and tight timelines

Design Leadership & Advocacy

1. Design Advocacy

• Introduced and championed user-centered design principles in an environment where product decisions were historically driven by technical feasibility or clinical priorities.

• Educated cross-functional teams on the value of design through:

  • Running stakeholder workshops to align on user needs.

  • Creating frameworks (like journey maps, service blueprints) to visualize problems from a user perspective.

  • Embedding design reviews into development cycles to ensure consistency and usability.

• Established lightweight design processes and rituals (e.g., critiques, design documentation) to improve collaboration and transparency.

Result: Helped shift the team's mindset from "building features" to solving user problems, leading to more cohesive, user-friendly product outcomes.

2. Driving Cross-Functional Collaboration

Given the complexity of working at the intersection of healthcare, data science, and technology, I focused on breaking down silos and fostering a collaborative problem-solving culture.

• Facilitated ideation sessions that brought together stakeholders from product, engineering, data science, and clinical teams to co-create solutions.

• Designed and led alignment workshops to:

  • Translate complex data science concepts into shared understanding.

  • Prioritize features based on both user value and business goals.

  • Resolve competing perspectives by grounding discussions in user insights and design prototypes.

• Used collaborative tools (e.g., Miro, Figma) to make design thinking accessible to non-designers, encouraging ongoing input and ownership from all teams.

Example: Through a series of structured workshops, I aligned the team on the concept and visualisation of the behavioral vital signs data ensuring data scientists, engineering and the product team had a shared vision of how insights would be presented to users in a clear and ethical way.

Impact of Design Advocacy & Collaboration

• Improved cross-team alignment, reducing back-and-forth and accelerating decision-making.

• Increased stakeholder buy-in for user-centered solutions, even in highly technical areas.

• Fostered a culture where design was seen not just as a "finishing touch," but as a critical part of product strategy.

Making a complex onboarding, simpler

Simplifying THE assessment experience and providing value

How to help people learn and try new habits

Data Interpretation & Content Strategy

At HealthRhythms, I focused on turning complex data into clear, useful experiences for both clinicians and app users. Working closely with the data science team, I helped decide what information mattered most, who needed to see it, and how to present it without overwhelming anyone.

For clinicians, I designed quick summaries that highlighted key mental health signals. For users, I kept insights simple with easy-to-read graphs showing daily patterns. I also created personalized nudges to encourage healthy habits and keep users engaged.

My goal was to make sure data was understandable, actionable, and always worked in service of the user—whether supporting better care decisions or helping individuals manage their mental health.

WHAT NEXT

A big part of my role is to bring in new ideas either to improve our workflow and user experience. We are exploring conversational interfaces to help reduce wait time for our care coaches but have FDA and other compliances to give the green light.

Apart from this using tools like Lovable and Rok, as well as other to see if we can speed up and improve the prototyping and testing phases.