Vera is a direct primary care platform designed to measurably reduce the anxiety of interacting with the healthcare system. Same-day appointments, a consistent care team you actually know, and one place where your whole family's health history lives — without the 3-week wait or the portal that requires a password reset every time.
01 — The Problem
Primary care in most markets is defined by friction: 3-week waits, 7-minute appointments, and portals that feel like government software from 2009. Vera needed a landing page that made healthcare feel calm, human, and trustworthy — before a patient ever booked an appointment.
The design problem: how do you reduce medical anxiety through a screen?
Every healthcare design choice is an anxiety-management decision. Colour temperature. White space. Copy register. Button size. Every element either adds to or reduces the patient's cortisol level before they've even read a word.
Vera required a design language that was warm, confident, and human — not clinical, not corporate, not tech-startup. This was the defining creative challenge.
Research Insights
02 — User Research
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.
03 — Business Challenges
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.
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.
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.
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
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)
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)
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)
05 — User Stories
06 — Competitor Analysis
| Feature | BUPA | Nuffield Health | Babylon Health | Push Doctor | Vera |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Same-Day Appointments | ~ | ~ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Consistent Care Team | ~ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Family Plans | ✓ | ✓ | ~ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Telehealth | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Medication Management | ~ | ~ | ~ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Chronic Condition Plans | ✓ | ✓ | ~ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Calm / Low-Anxiety UX | ✕ | ✕ | ~ | ~ | ✓ |
07 — User Flow
08 — Toolkits
Tools and methods used throughout the Vera design process — from patient journey mapping and clinical environment research through to accessible visual execution.
09 — Process
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.
Solution Exploration
10 — Design
Healthcare landing pages have a specific failure mode: they communicate information at the cost of reassurance. Vera needed to pass the "does this feel safe?" test before it passed the "does this have the feature I need?" test — because for a new patient, the first question always comes before the second. Sage green communicates health without the clinical coldness of pure white environments. Clay warms the CTAs. The cream background is the simplest signal of all: this is not a hospital.
Vera — Primary Care UX Landing Page
Design Highlights
Design System
A cohesive design system built to communicate health and human warmth at every touchpoint — from the terracotta accent to the sage secondary, every token was chosen to reduce anxiety and build trust.
Clay signals warmth and action. Sage communicates health without sterility. Cream provides the calm, unhurried background that makes healthcare feel safe.
Newsreader serif anchors trust and warmth. Figtree handles all UI copy with clarity and accessibility.
11 — Impact
Vera demonstrated that healthcare UX is fundamentally an anxiety management problem — and that solving it through design produces measurable outcomes before a patient ever books their first appointment.
Key Learnings