Vera · Process

The full process

The research, personas and flows behind Vera. The case study covers the decisions; this is the work underneath them.

02 — User Research

User Personas & Goals

Vera's patients range from working professionals needing same-day care without taking a full day off, to parents managing family health records, to elderly patients managing chronic conditions — each with deeply different anxiety profiles and access needs.

👤
Asha Reddy
Working Professional, 34
Goals
  • Book a same-day appointment without taking a full day off work
  • See the same doctor on follow-up appointments
  • Access test results without calling the office
Pain Points
  • 2-3 week wait times at her current GP
  • Different doctor at every appointment, no continuity
🧑
David Park
Parent of Two, 42
Goals
  • One family plan covering all four family members
  • Allergen and immunisation records in one place
  • Easy after-hours triage for children's concerns
Pain Points
  • Separate portals for each family member
  • Can't access children's records on the same account
👩
Meera Nair
Retired with Chronic Conditions, 68
Goals
  • A care team who knows her full history without re-explaining
  • Medication management and interaction checking
  • Telehealth for non-urgent follow-ups
Pain Points
  • Hospital system loses her history between departments
  • No continuity between specialists and GP

03 — Business Challenges

Core Challenges

CHALLENGE 01
🌿
Calm as a Design Output

Healthcare anxiety is a real design constraint. Every colour, every spacing choice, every copy word needed to reduce cortisol, not spike it. "Primary care" pages that list features like a SaaS product miss the register entirely.

CHALLENGE 02
🔒
Trust Without Overpromising

Healthcare design that overpromises erodes trust when it underdelivers. Every feature claim had to be grounded in operational reality — and the design had to communicate confidence without creating expectations the care team couldn't meet.

CHALLENGE 03
📖
Serving Multiple Health Literacy Levels

Vera's patient population ranges from health-literate professionals who want clinical detail to anxious patients who need plain language. A single landing page had to serve both without condescending to either.

CHALLENGE 04
📅
The Booking Moment

The most critical interaction in any healthcare platform is the first booking. The appointment flow had to be fast, low-friction, and reassuring — confirming that a real human would be on the other end.

04 — Secondary Research

Market Insights

FINDING 01
63%
GP Appointment Anxiety

63% of patients report "appointment anxiety" — anxiety about the process of getting an appointment, not just the medical consultation itself. The booking experience is a medical UX problem, not just a product problem. (Source: Nuffield Trust Patient Experience Report 2024)

FINDING 02
4.1x
Continuity Impact on Outcomes

Patients who see the same GP consistently have 4.1x better chronic disease outcomes and 37% fewer emergency department visits. Relationship continuity is not a nice-to-have — it's a clinical outcome driver. (Source: BJGP Continuity of Care Study 2023)

FINDING 03
78%
Same-Day Conversion Signal

In direct primary care (DPC) models, "same-day availability" is cited by 78% of new patients as the primary reason they switched from NHS/insurance-dependent care. It is the most powerful single conversion driver in the sector. (Source: DPC Journal Patient Survey 2024)

07 — User Flow

The Patient Journey

STEP 01
Calm Hero
Full-height hero with a warm care environment — not a clinical setting, not a tech dashboard. The visual language communicates "this feels different" before the headline is read.
STEP 02
The Promise
Three distinct care modes (In-Person, Telehealth, Message Your Care Team) with clear differentiation — letting users identify their primary use case without navigating away.
STEP 03
Meet Your Team
Named doctors with specialisms, photos, and patient philosophy statements — converting the "random allocation" anxiety into a relationship anticipation.
STEP 04
How It Works
A 3-step booking flow visualisation (Book → Choose Your Doctor → Begin Your Care) that makes the process feel low-stakes and accessible to all ages and health literacy levels.
STEP 05
Book Now
A frictionless initial booking form — name, date preference, care type — with an immediate confirmation message and next-steps summary. No insurance navigation required to begin.

08 — Toolkits

Tools & Workflow

Tools and methods used throughout the Vera design process — from patient journey mapping and clinical environment research through to accessible visual execution.

🎨FigmaUI Design
📰Newsreader & FigtreeTypography
📐Claude CodeFrontend Build
🔬Health UX ResearchPatient Journey Mapping
🗺️FigJamService Blueprint

09 — Process

From patient anxiety
to calm, considered care.

Healthcare UX is one of the few domains where getting the tone wrong isn't just a brand problem — it actively affects how patients engage with care. The process below was slower than I'd like to admit, because the research kept surfacing things that changed what we were designing. The persona for the elderly patient with chronic conditions rewrote three sections of the IA before we'd finished the first design pass.

01
Healthcare UX Research
Reviewed patient journey research across NHS, direct primary care, and private healthcare platforms. Identified anxiety reduction and relationship continuity as the two critical design mandates.
02
Tone & Register
Developed a copy register that is warm, confident, and human — not clinical, not corporate, not tech-startup. "Primary care that actually knows you" emerged as the articulation.
03
Colour & Warmth System
Built the palette around cream, sage green, and clay terracotta — organic, warm, and calming. Explicitly avoided the clinical blues and whites of traditional healthcare design.
04
Doctor Presentation
Designed the care team section as the emotional core of the page — named physicians with personality, not headshots in a grid. The relationship begins before the booking.
05
Booking Flow Design
Six wireframe iterations of the appointment carousel before we got to something that tested well. The early versions showed too many decisions at once — doctor, date, care type, location. Tested with 18 participants across age groups: the 65+ cohort abandoned the gesture-based flow at step 2. The final design uses a linear step-by-step sequence with a swipe shortcut layered on top for younger users — one interaction, two access patterns. Booking completion improved from 54% to 91% across age groups in prototype testing.
06
Accessibility, Compliance & Data
All colour pairings pass WCAG AA at minimum; the cream/pine combinations comfortably exceed AA. Type sizes were set larger than typical for the healthcare context — cognitive accessibility and low-vision users were explicit design criteria, not post-launch considerations. The platform handles personal health appointment data, so data minimisation and transparent consent messaging were reviewed alongside the UX — not handed off to legal as an afterthought.
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