CarefullyPhase I · Healthcare navigation

Researching a problem space

I knew I wanted to connect people in vulnerable populations to culturally competent care but this brief was far too vague to design against. Before I could draw a screen, I had to prove the problem was real, patterned, and documented.

My moveI read widely on medical bias and synthesized it into a foundational research report that made the case for why this product should exist. Four failure patterns came out of it, and they became the spine of everything after.

• Provider bias leads to dismissed symptomsWomen's pain is frequently reframed as an emotional issue. Hysteria-based dismissal of vaginal mesh complaints persisted for decades before patients were believed.
  The Guardian, 2020
• Lack of representation and cultural awarenessPain is expressed differently across cultures and is easily misread by providers who assume medical language is universal.
  The Guardian, 2025
• Poor risk transparency leads to harmful treatmentVaginal mesh, sodium valproate, and hormonal drug scandals trace back to patients not being told what they were agreeing to.
  The Guardian, 2020
• Cost, distance, and logistics compound the gapBlack women have fewer quality providers nearby and carry higher medical debt, so a bad match is expensive to escape.
  Boston University, 2023

Investing in something that only existed in my head

The course offered pre-written project prompts that would have been faster, safer, and easier. Choosing my own concept meant spending time and energy I did not have on an idea with no external validation, at a point when Carefully was purely a concept with nothing functional about it.

My moveI owned the problem. Carefully was born from my own encounters with the healthcare system. As I progressed, the motivation to energy cycle consistently regenerated itself. Finishing one phase produced enough momentum to start the next.

Finding the second user I did not know I had

Initially, I had framed Carefully entirely around patients. Then I read a piece by a UK physician describing how in an overworked system communicating with patients, particularly across cultures, is the hardest part of the job. Pain is difficult to convey in both directions, and there are almost no solutions that address that.

My moveI followed the thread instead of filing it away. That article seeded what became Carefully's secondary user, the burnt out but still idealistic provider, and reframed the product from a patient tool into a two-sided communication problem.

Learning the craft and the tool at the same time

I was refining my UX knowledge, learning Figma, and building Carefully all at once, while also studying learning design so I would get more out of the process itself. Early on, a simple mockup could eat an entire afternoon.

My moveI gave the learning curve its own dedicated push instead of letting it bleed into the design work. About a week in I knew where everything lived, and the tool stopped being the obstacle.

Taking in feedback

Recruiting participants, designing the study, chasing screen recordings, running the survey, and calculating the SUS score all amounted to slow, challenging work but I seldom missed a beat. Then a participant I barely knew returned harshly negative feedback, and it flattened me for three days.

My moveI kept it in the study as key feedback rather than dropping it, and it became one of the most consequential inputs into Phase II: a healthcare product has to look and feel competent before anyone will trust it with their body. On recruiting, persistence worked. I talked about Carefully openly and framed it around healthcare failures most people in my network had lived through themselves.