Role
UX & Service Designer
Year(s)
2021
Duties
Design system audit & setup
UX & UI Design
Stakeholder research
Interviews & workshop facilitation
Service Design Blueprint
User testing
DesignOps
Project scope
Clariness operates a digital platform that connects patients with clinical studies. I was hired as an external UX Designer but soon I realised that I could achieve biggest impact by focusing on Service Design. Clariness offered a complex service to the end-users, that was supported by teams located in different cities — digital marketing, customer support, software building — but also hospitals and medical staff, pharmaceutical companies, etc. Even though I spent the first month familiarising with Clinlife and its Design System and tried to improve it, I soon shifted my efforts on the Service Design.
Moreover, I worked on systematising design output across different Departments of the company (DesignOps). In this project, I hired and managed a junior designer on my side, as there were tight deadlines.
Graphic showing the process for Design System tickets. We defined 3 ticket types shared between 2 Development teams.
Product Archaelogy & Design System Work @Clariness
Design System excerpt with the Buttons.
Internal Stakeholder Research & Service Design
Early in the project, I realised we couldn’t move forward with UX design until we answered key questions about the service as a whole and the needs of the various user groups. It was necessary to deeply understand all the steps of the user journey, from the moment a patient comes across an ad, to being called by Clariness, signing the participation to the clinical study to arriving and being treated at the hospital. What are the gaps, the pain points of the holistic user experience of the patient? How do different actors and company departments collaborate to support this journey? How could the work of each of them be improved? and most importantly, how can we offer a better, smoother, more trustworthy experience to the patient?
With many new hires, remote collaboration and a breadth of expertise in the company (medical, legal, funnel marketing, call centers and engineers) internal knowledge was scattered. Many of the answers to the above questions were to be found inside the company. Especially, the call center staff had a wealth of information to offer, as they deeply empathised with the end-users. I proposed and led a research plan that included interviews with internal stakeholders. The interviews were focused on
(1) insights on each target group; (2) Their role in the recruitment service and cross-department collaboration; (3) which tools they used and their pain points; (4) their outlook on existing processes and improvement areas.
The interviews were later distilled into affinity maps, executive summaries and actionable steps for the product team. Finally, I created a Service Design Blueprint that visualised:
The patient journey and Our assumptions around it, including emotional states and key decision points
The marketing funnel (with conversion metrics from ad views to trial enrollment)
The full Clariness process, mapping every front-stage and back-stage action across teams and platforms
These visualisations and findings were shared with the entire product development team and used in strategic workshops—for example, to determine where and how we should collect user feedback. Most importantly, the blueprint led to meaningful product improvements. One key discovery was that patients were less likely to drop off if we clearly told them they could withdraw from the study at any time—even after signing consent. This small messaging change built trust and contributed to increased conversion.