HEALTH
APP
Project duration
April, 2025
Problem statement
A healthcare company hired me as a freelance Product Designer to improve the appointment cancellation experience in their mobile app. When a healthcare professional canceled an appointment, patients often felt confused and unsupported — unsure about refunds, next steps, or how to find another professional.
This unclear and transactional communication increased frustration and led many users to abandon the platform, directly affecting trust and retention. My challenge was to redesign this critical moment so patients felt guided, reassured, and empowered to reschedule or book a new appointment with ease, reducing drop-offs and strengthening the platform’s reliability.
My role and proccessI worked independently as the Content Designer, collaborating closely with the client’s product lead and design partner. To structure the work, I applied the Double Diamond framework, moving from research to delivery. This ensured that the solution addressed both patient needs and the healthcare provider’s business goals: reducing drop-off when appointments were canceled.
Step 1 - Product DiscoveryTo better understand the teleconsultation experience, I conducted a benchmark analysis of three healthcare apps with different product strategies: Olá Doutor, Médico 24 Horas, and DoutorFácil.
The goal was to identify how each product structures its main flows, from onboarding and appointment booking to payment, consultation history, family care, and ongoing health support. I looked closely at navigation patterns, empty states, bottom navigation, service discovery, payment models, medical records, and how each app communicates trust, urgency, and care.
I also mapped initial product questions and assumptions:
Should the app focus on immediate consultation or scheduled appointments?
How much information should users provide before seeing value?
Should the consultation history include only completed appointments or also active ones?
How should we separate ongoing and completed consultations?
Should family members be part of the MVP or a later phase?
Where should payment happen in the journey?
How can we communicate trust without making the experience feel bureaucratic?
This helped define the main opportunity for Carely: creating an experience that combines the clarity and speed of a consultation app with the trust, organization, and continuity expected from a healthcare platform.
Step 2 - Definition“How might we communicate quickly and empathetically so patients understand their options and remain engaged when their regular doctor cancels an appointment?”
Step 3 - Ideation I designed user flows that reduced friction by reusing the same layouts for both booking and rescheduling, simplifying the overall experience and avoiding duplicated journeys. The primary path was the reschedule flow, encouraging patients to either keep their slot with another professional or book the next availability with their regular doctor.
The secondary path was starting a new appointment from scratch, which reused the same patterns for consistency. Deleting an appointment was intentionally deprioritized, as it didn’t support retention.
Content decisions were critical:
Standardizing terminology → “appointment” for clarity and “professional” for inclusivity.
Simplifying actions → “Book appointment” (new) and “Reschedule” (existing).
Unifying confirmations → “Appointment scheduled” across both paths.
User Journey Map
Step 4 - DeliveryI consolidated the work into journey maps, wireframes, UX writing, and a clickable prototype. The final delivery included two main flows: the appointment booking journey and the appointment cancellation journey, helping visualize how patients would move through the experience from decision-making to confirmation, notification, next steps, and rescheduling.
To support consistency across the product, I also created and applied a small UI kit based on reusable components, visual patterns, and interaction states. This included buttons, cards, forms, navigation elements, empty states, appointment status patterns, and content guidelines, helping the interface feel scalable, cohesive, and aligned with the product’s visual direction.
The prototype was designed to balance usability, trust, and emotional support, with clear navigation, empathetic messages, structured empty states, and guidance for moments of uncertainty or frustration. The result was a patient-centered experience that reduced friction, strengthened confidence in the platform, and created a smoother path for booking, managing, cancelling, and rescheduling appointments.
