A great device, an app nobody opened
Context
The client, a health-tech company, made a medical device for people managing a chronic sleep-breathing condition. The device itself was excellent — for many patients, genuinely life-changing. The companion app connected to it was not.
Problem
Patients used it rarely: only when required, and sometimes not even then. Several design agencies had already tried to fix it. Each round produced new Figma files exploring new ways to present the data. None of it moved the needle.
The Goal
Create a modern, intuitive, and accessible experience that empowers users to manage wealth proactively while increasing customer support load by 30%.
My Role
By the time we joined, the pattern was obvious: a lot of good-looking work, and no tangible change in behavior. Something upstream of the visuals was broken.
03 / Design process plan
"We need a plan"
What is our role?
At the beginning of the project, the scope and expectations were not clearly defined. To align on goals and responsibilities, we facilitated a workshop with key stakeholders. This helped us establish a shared understanding of the challenge and define our role in the process. The main takeaway was clear: our task was not to recreate the existing app, but to help the team build a better experience informed by user needs.
04 / We need to know more
Research analysis
The team had already run an initial round of research, asking patients about their current experience and inviting them to weigh in on possible directions. It produced a stack of insights — and a request: turn that into three lo-fi clickable prototypes for the next round of interviews.
"When I open my app, I want to understand my data, so I can start a preventative or corrective measure and stay on top of my health. I want to see it instantly."
That single sentence, repeated in different words across dozens of interviews, became the brief’s real north star: instant legibility, not more features.
05 / Proposed strategy & findings
Initial recommendations
Recommendation 1: Home & navigation
A simple sleep timeline should be the first thing a patient sees on opening the app — reachable from both the Home and Sleep tabs.
Recommendation 2: Insights & feedback
Sleep quality should be understandable at a glance, through one dedicated insights tile rather than a dashboard of charts.
Recommendation 3: Daily health context
Patients should be able to see how last night’s sleep is affecting today, through an interactive impact graph tied to the hours of their day.
Recommendation 4: Device & medical status
Critical technical and medical information — device status, battery, doctor contact — belongs at the top of the screen, not buried in settings.
06 / Exploration
What patients actually opened the app to see
The four principles became the backbone, but a real product needed more than four screens. From first pairing a device to sharing a weekly report with a doctor, every moment was designed around one daily question: how did I sleep, and what should I do about it?
07 / Highway to... final design
Sitemap
Finally, after lots of conceptual work we managed to create the proposed flow for the app. A diagram that we worked on with the whole client’s team including marketing, developers and designers. Based on the flow, the roadmap was created and the app features were designed and implemented in a sequence.
08 / Proposed strategy & findings
Concepts for interviews
To keep this case study concise, the findings for each round appear in a modal when you select that round.
