Thrive Health
Co-Op
Medical
ux research
Timeline: January 2023 – April 2023
Thrive Health is a digital healthcare company that delivers personalized care experiences and supports patients in managing their health journeys. This project aimed to enhance patient task flow and journey awareness through interactive and nudging design—aligning with Thrive Health’s care loop of patient communication and progress monitoring.
My Role As a UX Design Intern
I contributed to improving the patient journey experience by designing interactive flows that encourage users to reflect on how their condition affects daily life. My focus was on task engagement, progress visibility, and nudging UX patterns that support Thrive Health’s goal of enabling effective patient-doctor communication during follow-up visits.
🧐 Consideration
Design Challenge
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Research
UX Design
Workshop
User Testing
UI Design
Redesign a patient task and journey management system for Thrive Health that enhances the patient experience by providing easy and intuitive ways for patients to manage their health tasks and track their progress.
The system should also include effective nudges and reminders to encourage patients to complete their tasks and celebrate their achievements, while striving to create a delightful user experience that balances nudging and engagement without becoming too intrusive or annoying. We will explore different ways to nudge users towards completing their tasks while keeping their experience positive and enjoyable.
🔨 Probe
Research Process
Research stages cover these areas:
📚 Medical Articles Essay Reading
🧩 Competitor: PC Health Analysis
📝 Task Design Analysis
💡 Nudge Types Analysis
✉️ Email Reminder Types Analysis
💖 Building Empathy Through Research
Understanding user context and industry patterns helped shape the foundation for task design and journey insights.
1.
Medical Articles Essay Reading
As part of my onboarding, I reviewed key medical articles to gain domain knowledge in the healthcare field. These insights shaped how I approached task flow design, patient journey mapping, and testing features that align with Thrive Health’s care model.
2.
Competitor:
PC Health App Analysis
During the second stage of my research, I conducted a competitive analysis of the PC Health app, which has a similar design to Thrive Health. I identified positive aspects such as the achievements and progress bar design, and negative aspects including the overwhelming programs lists and the program options UI design.
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Task Design Analysis
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Nudge Types
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Email Reminder Types
Key Findings
Email reminders with dynamic design and personalized user progress tracking can be very effective
Chatbot design on web platforms can enhance the onboarding experience.
Gesture interaction animations and nudging may not be suitable for desktop interfaces, but can be adapted in other ways to guide users in task completion.
👩🏻💻 Planning
UX Design
I created a user journey map based on our current user scenario, and integrated nudge design into a user flow to improve the overall user experience.
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Current Journey Map
I used Lori as a user scenario for the user journey map, starting from her referral to the clinic and ending with her post-recovery journey.
📌 Insight for Journey Map
The journey map showed that there were not many nudges to motivate Lori to engage with the Thrive Health platform beyond her appointment and recovery, highlighting the need for effective nudges and reminders to encourage ongoing engagement.
Design Consideration for Different Stages
Referral stage
Providing real-time referral status updates, including pending, accepted, or denied status, to allow users to check the information at any time.
Pre-appointment
Providing rewards, celebrations or confirmations through unique visualizations help indicate to users they have made progress.
Recovery stage
Turning recovery monitoring into a journey that encourages users to track progress and document experiences, identifying areas for additional support
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User Flow with Nudge Design
After creating the journey map, we focused on incorporating nudge design into the user flow, including onboarding guides, tooltips, in-app messaging, and email reminders. We also identified the importance of including an achievement page in future designs to enhance user satisfaction upon completing tasks. Our goal was to strategically time the appearance of nudges throughout the user flow to motivate users without becoming too intrusive or annoying.
🧠 Brainstorming
Crazy 8 workshop
I held a Crazy 8 workshop with three UI/UX designers to brainstorm potential UI designs in two rounds. The first focused on motivating users to complete their tasks, while the second aimed to provide guidance on what to do next.
🗳️ We voted for our favorite Sketch
During the workshop, each participant was given three votes per round to select their favorite sketches. In the end, we had five sketches that were voted on by multiple participants.
🌗 Medium fidelity
UI Design
Based on the insights and 5 sketches generated during the Crazy 8 workshop, I can begin to explore potential UI design solutions for the patient task and journey management system. Due to the limited working time, the prototypes mainly focused on how to nudge and guide users towards their next tasks. These flows were served as the mission for next user testing.
Mission 1
Highlight Priority Tasks
This flow focuses on highlighting the most important tasks that the user needs to complete first, with a prominent visual indicator that draws their attention to these high-priority items.
Mission 2
Continue 2 Second Task
The second flow involves a modal in-app message that guides users to their next priority task and celebrates their first completed task. A celebration pop-up appears every 10th, 20th, 30th, etc. completed task.
Mission 3
Notification for Tasks
This flow uses push notifications to remind users of upcoming or overdue tasks, allowing them to stay on top of their responsibilities and not miss any important deadlines or appointments.
Mission 4
View Tasks Summary
This flow shows users a summary of their completed tasks, helping them stay organized and focused on what needs to be done.
💬 GET Feedbacks
User testing
We conducted unmoderated user testing in Maze, based on the four mission flows of the UI design. Our goal was to determine if users found the system easy to use, if they were confused by it, and if the nudge features were effective in motivating them to continue.
Mission 1- Find Priority Tasks
Mission 2- Complete Another Task
Mission 3- Find Task through Notification
Mission 4- Find the Summary
👀 Result overview
Based on Maze testing, most users completed the first two tasks smoothly. However, task flows involving notifications and summary access showed signs of confusion, which led us to examine them in more detail.
Mission 3 - Find task through Notification
8 out of 23 users didn’t find the notification inbox useful for knowing what to do next. Some suggested making it more visible or adding filters like time and priority. Others preferred a more organized task page.
Mission 4 - Find the Summary
7 out of 21 users had trouble finding the Perma Profiler summary. Some looked for it in their profile, others expected a summary section on the homepage.
🧪 Testing Summary
The user testing results provided valuable insights for the design of the Thrive Health task journey system. Although there were some areas for improvement, the overall feedback was positive, and the testing helped inform the future design direction. This marks the end of my involvement in the project.
💖 Conclusion
Impact of Design
“Good design starts before the first screen—
with empathy and reflection.”
My co-op experience at Thrive Health was an awesome journey. As a research assistant, I had the opportunity to take a deep look at the user testing feedback and design practical solutions for the UI. This was a rare experience in the industry as it allowed me to work in a more careful and thorough manner compared to my previous internship experience which was focused on other workflows. Overall, this experience has significantly improved my UX design skills and expanded my understanding of user research in a practical context.
peggy3025487@gmail.com
©2025 by PEGGY LEE