Designing the first health-related feedback for participants
Delivering measurements to 1,518,202 (and growing) participants.
Translating clinical data into something people could understand and trust, whilst building a scalable methodology for future feedback.
ROLE
Product designer and User Centred Design Lead
TEAM
Product, engineering, UCD disciplines, delivery, clinical reps
TIME-FRAME
April 2025 - present (currently rolling out)
RESULTS
(As of Aug 2026)
~ 181,000 reports with 0.00% withdrawal rate
89% positive experience average
Challenge
THE USER CHALLENGE
Participants have never received feedback or measurements before. This is sensitive information with real emotional weight and a risk of causing alarm or confusion if done badly.
THE ORGANISATIONAL CHALLENGE
As Our Future Health continues to grow and enrich the participant cohort, we wanted to give something back to participants to provide them with value, and keep them engaged in the programme for future research opportunities. This was also the first of it's kind - we wanted to define what 'good' looked like, test our platform so we could scale our process for future insights.
Solution
DELIVERING SENSITIVE MEASUREMENTS
We chose to deliver measurements that participants gave at their appointment as it was the simplest level of information that wasn't new to the participant (and so fit with our ethical and regulatory considerations).
Although people may be familiar with these measurements, we needed to test the platform and functionality first. Therefore our first pilot was a fully built system that we could then probe participants on - we were then able to learn the value of e.g. visualisations to aid understanding of the measurements. We needed to remember our purpose as a research organisation was to help comprehension - not encourage behavioural change.
Bringing together a range of disciplines to understand the cholesterol problem space, and ideate on how we wanted to tackle it.
When designing, I was incorporating as much feedback as possible from the pilot testing, as well as business requirements e.g. delivering cholesterol and to the devolved nations.
ROLL OUT PLANNING
Planing the roll-out was more complex than anticipated. We needed to plan for roll-out as we needed to account for participants that had already joined, those with cholesterol reading and those yet to join.
I designed and facilitated this workshop to help us ideate as a team on what we wanted to learn and from who. It also helped us have clear decisions on what we wanted to prioritise in build, and when. With help from our Senior Research Scientist, we created a plan that was doable and valuable for roll-out.
Workshop to identify how we wanted to roll-out our product
The final chart to define the batches of participants
UCD LEAD
As User Centred Design lead, I was the point of contact between the wider squad and the UCD team, which included content design, behavioural science and research science. In this capacity I needed to aid with product priorities and planning, as well as general UCD planning.
Results
We're continuing to roll-out in batches and we're learning as we go.
(As of Aug 2026)
~ 181,000 reports with 0.00% withdrawal rate
89% positive experience average
We're strongly meeting expectations on how participants expect their measurements to be delivered, and with our enhancements we're hoping to continue to strengthen these numbers.
The most successful result is being the first to deliver some form of insight to our participants. This pattern can now be scaled and optimised as we learn more from our participants.
What's next?
We learnt a lot during the early stages of build - the complexities of delivering data to participants, the constraints on working in a slightly messy tech stack, and the details of how participants prefer to receive information. As a team we are still learning more from our participants and will continue to expand the roll-out!
Some key personal learnings:
-
As UCD lead, I needed to understand a multitude of different skills and disciplines. By doing this, I could better represent and advocate for the different disciplines.
-
When working quickly, it's best to work collaboratively when possible. With trickier design and product decisions, it was best to open the floor to a wider group, and narrow down the scope together.
The layout of the squad - it's hugely multi-disclipinary, and that's what brought the best outcomes for our participants and OFH.