Field insights, themes, needs, and guiding principles.
WorkVA Healthcare
01 / FROG DESIGN · HEALTHCARE
Making care easier to navigate.
Research-led experience design to help veterans understand their options and navigate appointment scheduling with greater clarity.
MY ROLE
Interaction Designer & UX ResearcherFieldwork, synthesis, wireframes, mockups
SETTING
frog × U.S. Department of Veterans AffairsMultidisciplinary team
WHAT WE DELIVERED
Research-informed design directionStrategy, documentation, proposed features, interaction designs, and prototype handoff
01 / The challenge
Healthcare shouldn't feel like another barrier to care.
Veterans navigating VA healthcare faced a complicated scheduling experience, including uncertainty about Community Care, provider options, and what would happen next.
Our team explored how to create a clearer, more connected self-scheduling experience—one that addressed veterans’ needs while recognizing the people and processes involved in care delivery.
02 / Field research
Listening before designing.
I prepared research collateral and led interviews with veterans, caregivers, and VA-related stakeholders, including Veterans Service Organizations (VSOs). We explored their existing experiences, expectations, frustrations, and needs.
Working with the team, I used those observations to challenge our assumptions before we defined a design direction.
03 / Synthesis & opportunities
Turning observations into design decisions.
We synthesized interview observations into recurring themes, insights, guiding principles, and potential opportunities. Here are three important connections between what we heard and the directions we explored.
RESEARCH INSIGHT
Scheduling felt fragmented.
Veterans described disjointed interactions and little closure between steps.
→
DESIGN OPPORTUNITY
Make progress and next steps clearer.
Create a scheduling path that communicates status, confirmation, and what happens next.
RESEARCH INSIGHT
Community Care was confusing.
Processes, eligibility, and changing policies could be difficult to navigate.
→
DESIGN OPPORTUNITY
Explain the path to care.
Make information and available actions easier to discover in context.
RESEARCH INSIGHT
Veterans wanted greater control.
Participants wanted choices about providers and the ability to manage appointments themselves.
→
DESIGN OPPORTUNITY
Enable self-service and choice.
Explore more transparent scheduling and provider-selection interactions.
Making the current and ideal journeys visible
Our journey maps helped communicate how fragmented scheduling could be reconsidered as a more coherent series of interactions. These are research and design artifacts—not evidence of a launched experience.
04 / Design evolution
From research to interaction design.
I created landing-page and appointment-scheduling wireframes, which developed into more detailed interface designs. The original Sketch working file below shows how the scheduling experience was explored as an end-to-end interaction flow.
Original working file: AtlasVA self-scheduling flow V4, marked RM. The sequence illustrates proposed interaction states, not a verified production release.
05 / Interactive prototype
Making the direction tangible.
The designs progressed from wireframes into higher-fidelity mockups and a clickable prototype demonstrated on an iPad. This gave stakeholders a concrete way to review the experience and discuss how the proposed interactions worked together.
My work on the landing and scheduling experiences helped carry research insights into an understandable product flow.
Prototype view from the original VA portfolio.
06 / Final handoff
A clear direction the VA could take forward.
Our multidisciplinary team handed the VA a body of research, proposed features, experience strategy, wireframes, design documentation, and prototype material to inform potential next steps.
Scheduling flows, interface concepts, and clickable prototype.
Documentation and recommendations for VA stakeholders to evaluate.
Project outcome: We delivered a research-informed design direction and comprehensive handoff for VA stakeholders to evaluate. Subsequent implementation was outside the scope of this engagement.
What this project demonstrates about my approach
By grounding the work in direct conversations with veterans and caregivers, I was able to connect real needs to tangible design choices. It reinforced a principle I continue to apply to complex product work: understand the whole experience first, then make each interaction easier to navigate.