Navigating Policy Shifts and Margin Pressures in Healthcare in 2026
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Published by MM+M, 2025
In the face of policy shifts and ongoing financial pressures, the healthcare organizations that thrive will be those that move decisively, viewing disruption not as a crisis to manage but as an opportunity to build a sustainable future. I write about seven trends that we should expect to see to keep healthcare sustainable and true to its mission. |
Marketing Maturity and the Future of Healthcare Growth
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Podcast by Touch point media , 2025
I chatted with hosts Chris Boyer and Reed Smith to discuss findings from my latest marketing maturity research. I shared how high-performing health systems operationalize insights, the gaps holding teams back, and what the next three to five years could look like as marketing evolves from a campaign function to a growth ecosystem. |
Designing for Choice: Simplify Care-finding to Build Patient Trust
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Published by MERGE, 2025
Navigating the healthcare system can be overwhelming for patients, with numerous options and complex terminology. This article explores how simplifying the care-finding process—by aligning language with patient needs and reducing decision fatigue—can enhance trust and improve health outcomes. Drawing inspiration from consumer industries, it offers actionable strategies to create intuitive, patient-centered digital experiences. |
Innovation in Health Provider Marketing
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Published by MERGE, 2025
Post-COVID, healthcare providers face rising demand, limited access, and a fragmented digital ecosystem. This report benchmarks U.S. healthcare marketing innovation across five areas—experience, strategy and branding, technology, data-driven decision-making, and health equity—offering leaders competitive intelligence and actionable strategies to drive maturity and make smart, high-impact investments. |
We Need to Address Design's Likability Problem
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Published in DMI:Review, 2024
This opinion piece explores likability through the lens of person perception and Susan Fiske’s Stereotype Content Model, examining how perceptions of warmth and competence are shaped by bias—and how these biases can disproportionately influence practitioners of strategic design, including service design, business innovation, and systemic design. |
Omnichannel Marketing: Mastering the Art of Journey Mapping in Pharma
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Published by MERGE, 2023
Journey mapping is a powerful tool for pharma organizations to see the experience through the customer’s eyes and anticipate future needs. Beyond gathering insights, it uncovers gaps and friction points—whether moving across devices, departments, or channels. For an effective omnichannel ecosystem, understanding the full customer path—from discovery to adoption—is essential. A journey map becomes the north star, guiding the design of a connected, timely, and personalized experience across every touchpoint. |
The (Happy?) Marriage of Experience Strategy and Marketing
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Presented at UXPA Boston, 2022
When I moved from Mad*Pow to MERGE, apart from getting a crash course in contemporary marketing, I began to apply experience strategy and service design in marketing contexts. By leveraging behavior change concepts, service blueprinting, co-creation, and systems thinking, marketers can shape perceptions, orchestrate customer journeys, and deliver authentic brand experiences—all while maintaining user agency and trust in an era of evolving privacy and data challenges. |
Interview with CX Buzz
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Published in CX Buzz Online Magazine, 2021
Exploration of the evolving role of human-centered design in marketing, highlighting how strategic design, ethnographic research, and experience strategy reshape customer journeys, enhance brand authenticity, and address the challenges of digital transformation. Emphasis on empathy, cross-functional collaboration, and a holistic approach to creating meaningful customer experiences. |
Boost Your Emotional Intelligence to Move from Good UX to Great
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Published in O'Reilly's 97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know.
Presented at UXPA Boston and Big Design Conference, 2021 The shift toward human-centered, democratized design has pushed UX practitioners to involve end users and stakeholders directly. But humans are messy—diverse priorities, opinions, and personalities make collaboration hard, and typical design education doesn’t prepare practitioners for these real-world challenges. The common thread among the best UX professionals? Emotional intelligence. |
Is Your Health Plan CX Ready for CAA's No Surprise Act?
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Published by MERGE, 2021
The No Surprises Act, part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, introduces significant changes to how health insurance companies engage with their members. With a January 2022 deadline looming, health plans must prepare to ensure a seamless member experience while enacting these changes. This article offers valuable insights and tips to help health plans navigate the new regulations and go beyond the basic requirements. |
Uncharted Waters: Why It’s Important to Design for Newcomers
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Published in UX Booth, 2020
Presented at Boston UXPA and Big Design Conference Designers often view UX through familiar accessibility lenses but one perspective is often overlooked: the newcomer. Just as designing for accessibility benefits everyone, designing for first-time users can elevate the experience for all. How do we craft experiences for someone encountering your product for the very first time, with no prior mental model to guide them? |
Design and Deliver More Innovative Solutions with a Holistic Understanding of the Chronic Health Experience
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Webinar: Center for Health Experience Design, 2020
The Chronic Health Experience Map provides a human-centered view of the health ecosystem for individuals managing a chronic condition. By highlighting common health-related events, it helps designers and innovators build empathy for patients’ experiences across their journey and create solutions that deliver meaningful value and improved health outcomes. |
Using Service Design to Architect an Oncology Experience
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Presented at UX Healthcare Web Conference, 2020
Use of Service Design with a local cancer center to shape the architecture of a new oncology building. Participatory approaches ensured solutions met the needs of patients, caregivers, providers, and staff, while fostering empathy. Thoughtful “on stage” and “off stage” spaces, informed by radiation and medical oncology, created a seamless flow aligned with the patient journey. |
The Information Architecture Element in Practice
Clinical Decision Support & AI User Interface Design
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Panel discussion: Industrial Designer's Society of America, 2019
Designing Intelligence augmentation systems for clinical decision support. We also chatted about software as medical device and how Clinical decision support can be integrated into routine workflow. Glad to be in the company of Jeff Hersch and Mike Rayo, both leaders in this field! |
From Ideation to Implementation: Developing Your Own Design Methodology
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Stepping beyond familiar tools, processes, and methodologies can feel daunting—but it’s how designers grow. This talk is for designers who thought “There has to be a better way,” and will empower them to build or adapt tools and processes that work. It highlights the value of flexible thinking, open-mindedness, and thought leadership.
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Archetypes as Enablers of Personalization in Design
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Webinar: Center for Health Experience Design, 2018
Attitudes and personality traits heavily influence how people track and manage their health. Understanding patient archetypes allows designers to first recognize these traits and then create solutions tailored to individual needs. Discover why behavior‑based personas are more actionable than demographics when guiding design decisions. |
Behavior Based Persona-building Toolkit
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Workshop at Health Experience Design Conference, 2019 and Lavacon Conference, 2017
Presented at UXPA NH, Innovation Learning Network (ILN), Boston CHI, Center for Health Experience Design, 2018 MPACT is a persona-building framework that leverages human behavior and the power of play to create better products and services. It guides facilitators and diverse stakeholder teams through a step-by-step process—from user research and project objectives to a shared design direction. MPACT workshops offer hands-on learning to quickly get teams applying the framework. |
Teaching Participatory Design
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Workshop lead at HIMMS NorCal ePatient Summit, 2017 and Health Experience Design Conference, 2018
During the workshops participants learned about what participatory design is and how it can be used effectively while designing in a healthcare setting. Participatory design is an approach to design strategy that brings customers into the heart of the design process. Attendees were introduced to basic participatory service design methods, including fundamental tools and exercises, and learn how to choose activities, frame design prompts, and facilitate design activities to generate the best results |
Mad*Pow Service Design Jam
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Service Design jam organizer 2017, 2018
Organized and facilitated Mad*Pow’s Service Design Jam, a hackathon event that introduces participants to core service design principles, complemented by process, organizational, information, and technology design concepts.
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Teaching Journey Mapping
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Workshop lead at Health Experience Refactored Conference, 2017
A hands-on, four-hour workshop exploring how journey maps drive collaboration—defining vision, telling the solution story, benchmarking against competitors, and measuring impact. Using the real-world scenario of receiving a health insurance Explanation of Benefits, participants dive into service design and systems thinking to uncover insights and design better experiences. |
Yielding Powerful Insights Through Relationship Mapping
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Published in UX Planet, 2017
This method leverages Relationship Mapping as a collaborative tool to capture rich stories during discovery sessions. By providing participants with a tangible discussion aid, it helps researchers and strategists to Identify connections between actors in a system, Reveal the influence of each actor, and Uncover the nature of interactions, including frequency, topics, and modes. |