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Levityby Katie
All work

Kiira Health - Designing a Mobile Health Platform

Creating personal and inclusive healthcare for young women

  • End-To-End
  • Product Design
  • iOS
Try the prototype (opens in a new tab)
A hand holding a phone showing the Kiira home screen, with shortcuts to booking, chat and lab results above an appointment reminder.
The Kiira colour palette as a horizontal strip of lavender, teal, pink, green and peach.

Overview & Impact

We all know that healthcare could be better. When you're in a health crisis, having easy access to quality care can be challenging.

Kiira Health is a telemedicine startup focused on creating inclusive, accessible care for women through their virtual care platform. This app provides a seamless experience with 24 hour access to health experts via video visits and chat.

Key Considerations: Because there was a beta product currently launched on a trial run there was time pressure to fix existing bugs and improve the design as quickly as possible. Growing engagement with users was needed in order to validate our value and move the company forwards.

Increase in engagement
500%
Decrease in bounce rate
65%
Success rate in onboarding
90%

My Role

Web Design & Branding

As the sole designer in the company, I was responsible for building and maintaining Kiira’s website and sales channels. This included working with leadership to define the company brand identity and building out brand guidelines.

Product Design - Patient App

I successfully redesigned our entire health platform, including doing all user research, content, information architecture, and taking designs from low-fidelity concepts to high-fidelity prototypes based on user testing.

Product Design - Clinician App

Once completing the redesign of our customer-facing platform, I worked through redesigning Kiira’s internal tool, the clinician-facing side of our application. This involved owning the end-to-end process from research to handoff.

Company
Kiira Health
Dates
Apr 2021 - Dec 2021
A Kiira chat between a member and Dr. Candice Fraser about a six-week postpartum check-up, framed by two provider portraits.

Phase 1 - Research

MVP Challenges

Since this project involved adapting an existing beta product, I wanted to identify usability issues by doing a heuristic evaluation and discovering and prioritizing the most impactful changes to make.

An annotated audit of the original Kiira beta screens, with arrows and notes marking a profile image that looks tappable but isn’t, and an AI chatbot that leads users into a loop.

  • Inconsistent & Unintuitive UI

    Icons and visual language didn’t match common patterns and inconsistency felt unprofessional.

  • Confusing Flows

    Too many steps, especially in the onboarding, and no progress indicators led to low engagement.

  • Broken Features

    The AI chatbot was unfinished, leading to dead ends and frustrating loops.

  • Accessibility Gaps

    Typography, contrast, and hierarchy didn’t meet standards.

The Kiira colour palette strip in lavender, teal, pink, green and peach.

User Research

As part of my user research I reached out to existing users through a survey, asking about their experience with the app as well as their experiences with healthcare as a whole. I later interviewed several of them, along with many non-users within our target demographic in order to have a deeper understanding of their pain points.

A persona card for a 20-year-old student in Los Angeles, listing her goals and pain points beside her stated need: to talk with someone who will really listen and understand what she needs.

What They Want

  • Authenticity

    People want authenticity and respect from a provider who actively listens. Many felt that they had been talked to in a condescending way by providers in the past.

  • Transparency:

    Healthcare is complex and rarely up-front. Transparency and simplicity in logistics and the price of services was something users expressed frustration with from their past experiences. In our product, we aimed to provide information from the beginning.

  • Diversity & Relatability

    Having a provider who is relatable in gender, sexuality, and/or race was important to many of our users, especially women of color, as a way of understanding and connecting.

Our Goals

Focus on What WorksPrioritize high-value, functional features
1
Streamline User FlowsShorter, clearer flows consistent with industry patterns
2
Design for EveryoneAccessible, inclusive, mobile-first experience
3
Build the FoundationScalable design system + unified brand identity
4

Phase 2 - Foundations

Defining Our Brand & Building a System

At first, leadership was hesitant to invest in a design system because it meant delaying feature work. But I knew it was the right choice. Building a strong foundation would create efficiency, speed, and consistency in the long run. I led workshops with the leadership team to define our brand identity - how we wanted Kiira to look, feel, and sound - and to align on our target audience. Establishing those foundations not only unified our brand and product but also accelerated our overall workflow.

The Kiira design system on one board — type, radius and spacing foundation tiles, the penguin logo, an icon set, and components including pills, badges, chat bubbles, headers and nav bars.
A Figma variables panel of Kiira’s primitive colours, listing numbered teal, lavender and pink steps with their hex values.A Figma variables panel of Kiira’s typography tokens, mapping heading, subheading and body styles to font family, size scale and weight.A Figma variables panel of Kiira’s semantic colour tokens for text, background, border, button, state and icon.

The Solution: Onboarding

Streamlining First Impressions

  • Removed Chatbot

    Replaced clunky, unfinished flow with simple, usable form

  • Clearer, Fewer Steps

    Progress indicators + error prevention for smoother experience

  • Product Tour

    Taught new users without overwhelming them

  • A Kiira onboarding screen headed “Connect with your care squad”, above sign-up and login options.
  • A “Complete your profile” onboarding screen collecting name, preferred name, birthday, state of residency and gender.
  • An account activation screen with email, password and confirm-password fields and a Face ID option.
  • The Kiira home screen with a product-tour tooltip reading “Welcome to your Kiira Home”, the first of six steps.

The Solution: Dashboard

A Cohesive Health Hub & Personal Profile

  • Unified Access

    Quick care actions and personalized reminders

  • Flexible Management

    Update info, manage care team, and access resources

  • Consistent UI

    Aligned with new design system and brand standards

  • The Kiira home screen showing shortcut tiles, an upcoming appointment reminder, and the member’s care team.
  • A member profile screen showing plan, location, pronouns, billing and insurance, pharmacy, emergency contact and health records.
  • A “Book Visit” screen offering primary care, women’s health and mental health, above a list of preferred providers.
  • A visit summary for a six-week postpartum follow-up, with reason for visit, a new prescription, provider notes and a recommended check-in.

The Solution: Visits, Chats, & More

Let’s See What Else We Can Do!

  • Book Visits

    Schedule a virtual appointment

  • See Appointments

    View upcoming and past visits

  • Chat With An Expert

    Talk to a provider or tech support

  • A provider search listing primary care doctors with their availability across two days.
  • An upcoming virtual visit screen showing the provider, rating, a location confirmation checkbox and a Begin Visit button.
  • A chat thread with a provider answering a question about postpartum soreness, the keyboard open.
  • A past-visits list showing four appointments with dates, providers, visit types and links to their summaries.
Walk through the flows (opens in a new tab)

Results & Impact

Even with a tight timeline and limited resources - a team of just one designer (myself) and one full-stack developer - we delivered a fully functional MVP in five months. By focusing on our core features and target users, we created a cohesive, accessible platform that demonstrated real value and positioned Kiira Health for growth.

Task Success RateValidated in usability testing and analytics
95%
Engagement IncreaseMore video visits and active chats with providers
500%
Screens in 5 MonthsDelivered all MVP user flows as the sole designer
150+
Bounce Rate DecreaseStreamlined onboarding for higher completion
65%

Reflections

Looking Back & Ahead

This project taught me the full value of the design process - from research and brand definition to product delivery. Advocating for design from start to finish, I learned how to creatively problem-solve with limited resources and prove that thoughtful design can drive real impact, even under tight constraints.

An illustration of a clinician in a white coat and stethoscope reviewing notes on a tablet.

  • Design System Impact

    Increased efficiency, strengthened the brand, and unified product + website

  • Key Takeaways

    Strong research + user-centered design are critical; make healthcare simple, trustworthy, and joyful

  • AI & Automation

    Rebuild chatbot to truly help users (insurance, test results, booking, FAQs) and streamline workflows

  • Clinician Platform

    Expand and improve internal tools to better support providers