Cutting Specimen Processing Errors
in Clinical Laboratories
🧬 In Vitro Diagnostics Platform
When your UX mistakes could literally affect someone’s heartbeat
Design Director | 0 → 1 Product ● Regulatory Compliance
At a Glance
TL;DR
Summary
A secure, HIPAA-compliant digital platform for managing in vitro diagnostic (IVD) workflows across transfusion labs. The platform streamlines the lifecycle of patient samples, blood, tissue, and other materials while balancing regulatory rigor, real-world laboratory constraints, and multi-role complexity.
My Role:
Hands-on Design Director leading UX strategy, research, cross-functional collaboration, and design operations for a team of 2 full-time designers + contractors
Team:
2-4 designers, 5 engineers, 1 project manager, 1 project owner
Timeline:
Built MVP in 6 months while working on 5-10 concurrent projects
Strategic Impact:
Created an alert system used to win multiple contracts
Built an evolving design system used across all products
Established design ops practices that accelerated dev handoffs
The Mission
Building a platform where lives depend on good UX
Picture this: You walk into a transfusion lab for the first time. There’s a symphony of beeping machines, people in white coats moving with the urgency of someone who knows their work literally keeps hearts beating, and enough acronyms floating around to make NASA jealous. And somewhere in this beautiful chaos, I had to design a digital platform that wouldn’t just survive, but actually help.
This wasn’t your typical “let’s redesign the checkout flow” project. This was designing for an environment where one wrong click could mean the difference between a successful blood transfusion and… well, let’s just say the stakes were slightly higher than usual.
The “Oh, We’re Really Doing This” Challenge
When reality hits harder than your morning coffee
When we set out to build this In Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) platform from zero to one, I thought I knew what I was getting into. I had worked on complex B2B products before. How hard could it be?
It was, in fact, quite hard.
Complex Domain
Deeply regulated lab environment with unique UX constraints (no mobile, shared workstations, middleware integration)
Multi-Role Complexity
Highly fragmented workflows across 8 distinct user roles, from physicians to lab technologists.
Highly fragmented workflows
UX involving physicians, nurses, phlebotomists, technologists, and lab directors
Time-Critical Operations
Time-sensitive diagnostics requiring clear prioritization and alerting without inducing fatigue.
Design Process
Real-world product design is rarely linear
Real-world product design is rarely linear. We revisited key stages frequently to ensure we remained aligned with business goals, regulatory requirements, and user safety. Always aiming for a frictionless, reliable experience.
We revisited key stages often to ensure we stayed aligned with business goals, regulatory needs, and user safety.
Always aiming for a frictionless, reliable experience.
Multi-Role Discovery & Research
The humans behind the life-saving work
Partnered with an external research team to scale discovery across complex roles. Interviewed 3–5 users in each group:
- Planning & Strategy: Directors and managers
- Lab Upkeep: Technologists and equipment managers
- Test Orders: Physicians, nurses, pathologists, phlebotomists, and even patients
This enabled the creation of a Transfusion Lab Journey Map – our sacred document that became the foundation for all design decisions and the go-to reference for resolving cross-functional conflicts throughout the project.
Instead of diving headfirst into wireframes, we did something radical: we talked to people.
Revolutionary, I know!
Transfusion Lab Journey Map
Reality Check Insights
When expert knowledge meets current reality
Here’s where things got interesting. We had all this beautiful research, but then reality knocked on our door with muddy boots.
SMEs ≠ Current Reality
What experts remembered from experience ≠ what labs actually do today.
Solution: Multi-source validation and real-time observation.
Alert Fatigue is Deadly
When everything is urgent, nothing is urgent—and that’s dangerous.
Solution: Smart, tiered alerts visible from across the room.
One Size Fits None
Lab directors and phlebotomists need completely different information.
Solution: Role-based interfaces that show only what matters
Design Solutions That Worked
Where empathy-driven design leadership really showed up
Instead of imposing our beautiful, complex vision on these hardworking professionals, we listened and adapted to their needs. Here’s what we built:
Design Operations & Leadership
Startup speed requires systems, not just hustle
As a hands-on design leader managing 2 full-time designers plus contractors across 5-10 concurrent projects in a fast-paced startup environment, I established design ops practices that accelerated our velocity:
Process Innovations
- Design decision log — Tracked major design/feature changes, rationale, and stakeholders involved, creating institutional knowledge as the team scaled
- Figma annotation system — Embedded notes directly in files for devs and PMs, reducing back-and-forth questions
- Synced design tasks to JIRA — Kept design work visible and aligned with dev sprints, staying 1-2 sprints ahead
- Design review cadence — Established regular touchpoints with dev/PM so questions were answered before handoff, speeding up approvals
Mentorship
- Coached designers on OKRs and personal growth goals while meeting tight deadlines
- One designer significantly improved their presenting skills
- Another became a design library owner after leveling up component documentation skills
Design System Stewardship
- Built and evolved a design system used across all company products
- Added new components based on emerging product needs
- Enabled faster design-to-development cycles and consistency at scale
The Dream Team
Healthcare design is definitely a team sport
This wasn’t a one-person show. Great design in healthcare requires a village, and we had an amazing one:
| Cross-functional partnership was key to balancing user needs with regulatory requirements and technical constraints.
What I’d Do Differently
If I had a time machine and perfect hindsight
Looking back, I learned that SME alignment isn’t just about knowledge transfer; it’s about building consensus between “how we used to do things” and “how we do things now.” Those aren’t always the same thing.
The Real Talk
What this project actually taught (and reinstilled in) me
Designing for healthcare taught me that behind every workflow and alert, real people are doing work that matters in ways most of us never think about. This project stretched our team’s adaptability and reminded me why empathy-driven design leadership matters.
| The best design leadership isn’t about having all the answers – it’s about creating environments where the right answers can emerge.
Credits: This represents the collaborative efforts of an incredible team. The real heroes are the lab professionals who trusted us with their workflows and the patients who benefit from better diagnostic tools.
We just made some screens that don’t suck.
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