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Project Overview:

I collaborated on the design of CARO, a speculative service intervention rethinking how emergency room discharge information is communicated to patients. The project addressed a critical breakdown in healthcare experiences. Patients leaving the ER often feel overwhelmed, confused, and unsupported once they return home. From research to low-fidelity prototyping and testing, our work reframed discharge communication as an ongoing, human-centred experience rather than a single paper handoff.

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Objectives:

1. Design for Clarity Under Pressure:
ER discharge happens when patients are tired, anxious, and overloaded. CARO prioritizes clarity in moments of cognitive fatigue, breaking complex medical information into guidance that feels calm, readable, and actionable once patients return home.

2. Make Care Accessible Beyond the Hospital:
Discharge instructions often fail patients with low health literacy or language barriers. CARO reframes information delivery through visual hierarchy and interaction design, ensuring essential next steps are understandable without feeling clinical or intimidating.

3. Extend Discharge Into Ongoing Support:
Rather than treating discharge as an endpoint, CARO positions it as a continuation of care. The experience guides patients through what comes next, reinforcing confidence, recall, and follow-through after leaving the ER.

4. Reduce Anxiety Through Reassurance and Structure:
Uncertainty after discharge can lead to confusion and non-adherence. CARO introduces structure, onboarding, and gentle reinforcement to help patients feel supported, oriented, and less alone during recovery.

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Scope of Work:

CARO was designed as a speculative service grounded in real constraints, real behaviours, and real moments of breakdown.

• Contributed to problem framing and research development, refining focused research questions around ER discharge inefficiencies and patient comprehension.
• Developed pre- and post-intervention journey maps that surfaced breakdown points in clarity, recall, and confidence after discharge.
• Designed a complete service flow outlining entry, interaction, and exit moments across patients, healthcare staff, and the CARO system.
• Created low-fidelity diegetic prototypes, including paper-based mobile interfaces and physical artifacts, to simulate realistic post-discharge interactions.
• Participated in bodystorming and experience testing sessions, observing users, capturing qualitative insights, and identifying moments of confusion and reassurance.
• Translated testing insights into actionable design changes, including clearer onboarding, more intuitive iconography, and stronger explanation of CARO’s role within the service.

CARO is not positioned as a polished product, but as a believable future-state service embedded within emergency care workflows. Every decision was informed by testing, grounded in user behaviour, and shaped to support patients when clarity matters most.

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