Health Hug—Care Plan Design
Designing a Clear, Actionable Workflow for Clinicians Managing Pediatric Care
The Challenge
We set out to design a new platform for care managers supporting families of children with chronic conditions. Every team member had firsthand experience with the old system—rigid, disjointed software that buried what truly mattered. But this team also brought something rare: many of us had lived the problem ourselves as parents, juggling multiple specialists, fragmented records, and the emotional load that comes with trying to keep it all straight.
Because this was a brand-new product, we took an exploratory, iterative approach—opening the problem space widely to understand the full ecosystem before narrowing toward focused, testable solutions. Our goal wasn’t just to build software. It was to design a tool people could trust. One that simplified care coordination, supported emotional well-being, and felt genuinely human.
The Care Plan module was our first major release and the emotional core of the app: where families see their goals, medications, and daily routines come together in a way that finally makes sense.
My role
As Lead UX Designer, I was responsible for the end-to-end experience across Health Hug’s ecosystem, including the mobile app (for families), the administrative tools (for care coordinators), and the enrollment process.
This case study focuses on the Care Plan module within the care coordinator web app—the heart of their workflow and the first feature to reach production. It connected families’ goals, medications, and care activities in one unified, flexible interface.
The result
The Care Plan launched successfully and quickly proved the value of a human-centered approach:
- Simplified workflows reduced redundant data entry and improved documentation accuracy
- Modular, intuitive layout allowed faster updates during calls and follow-ups
- Positive pilot feedback from care managers, who described the experience as “streamlined, clear, and finally made for how we actually work.”
This module set the design foundation for the rest of the Health Hug platform and reestablished confidence in the system as something built for them, not at them.
Discover
Seeing the Whole Picture
We began with listening sessions and workflow mapping. Care managers walked us through their daily routines—often toggling between three or more systems, spreadsheets, and paper notes. Many confessed they spent more time documenting care than actually delivering it.
Early stakeholder and caregiver conversations highlighted three unmet needs: confidence, clarity, and emotional support.
The Emotional Layer
We also looked at the emotional layer: families who felt lost in the maze of specialists, medications, and scheduling. The insight was clear: the problem wasn’t effort—it was fragmentation.
Define
Reframing the problem
At first, it looked like a data problem. But the deeper issue was human: care managers were drowning in tools that didn’t reflect how care actually happens.
We reframed our design question from:
“How do we track care?”
to
““How do we make care coordination feel human, connected, and manageable?”
That shift helped us prioritize clarity, flexibility, and trust as our design principles.
Showing both care manager and parent perspectives reveals how design decisions affect each side of the care relationship—and where their needs intersect or diverge
Develop
Prototyping for Clarity and Connection
Facilitated product and development workshops, ensuring user voices were central to brainstorming. Team
Using Figma, we created and tested multiple layouts for the Care Plan view—exploring how information could surface naturally during real-time calls with families. Each iteration focused on reducing cognitive load and supporting conversation flow.
We introduced a modular structure for goals, medications, and activities, enabling quick updates without losing context. And we added a Support Activities page that connected families to practical resources, with approachable titles that humanized the content:
- You Are Not Alone — Support Groups
- Burnout Is Real — Stress Management
- Care Shouldn’t Cost You Everything — Financial & Prescription Aid
Each round of testing brought us closer to an experience that felt less like software and more like support.
We refined the "zones of work" within the care plan and gradually worked our way toward organizing the whole in greater detail.
Illustrates how information and actions move between people and tools, highlighting real-world handoffs, friction points, and opportunities to simplify the workflow.
Deliver
From Prototype to Practice
The final Care Plan experience went live as the first production module in the Health Hug platform. It integrated seamlessly with EHR data, simplified progress tracking, and cut down documentation time during calls.
Care managers described it as “a tool that finally gets how we work.” Families found the plans easier to understand and act on—less medical chart, more living guide.
Early feedback showed higher task completion rates and a noticeable lift in user confidence. The Care Plan became the anchor for subsequent feature releases, setting the tone for a system designed for care, not control.
Care plan in context of entire patient record with ‘dashboard’ showing immediate needs and updates
Detail of Care plan showing latest vitals readings from remote patient monitoring
The Takeaway
In building something new, we learned that real innovation doesn’t come from complexity—it comes from clarity.
Health Hug’s Care Plan experience proved that when you give people tools that reflect how they actually work and care, the technology fades into the background, and trust takes its place.
A system built for them, not at them.
