I built a brand to trust, established a multi-platform design system for scaling and redesigned the app for managing patient expectations and providers time.
- Valera Health is an online mental health service provider, working with mental health professionals and insurance companies to bring excellent psychiatry, psychology and care management services to those who need them most.
- I joined the company as a primary designer, and as the business scaled over time transitioned to a Lead designer role.
Building the Valera Design system
What problem does it solve?
inconsistency leads to a. longer dev time and B.mistrust
Inconsistency between platforms can lead patients to doubt the service provider’s reliability or credibility. In a market like healthcare, and especially in the field of mental healthcare, creating a trust relationship
Getting started
initial buy-in
- why do we need this?
- conversations with stakeholders
- setting expectations
project planning
- mapping current recurring components and patterns
- setting up goals
- what was not included? desktop first, patient-facing second
Design through launch
early assumptions and decisions
- why MUI as base? (big established library)
- How to treat branding?
- Leading with a vision
- leaving room for growth
Launching the design system
- team presentation
- discussion with front-end developers, setting up Storybook with Figma as source of truth
- setting up goals for future development and incremental implementation with the product team
Guidelines and patterns
As
How to govern a design system?
Wins
Choosing a robust base like the MUI library allowed us to
The system was first used on a new desktop product, aimed at managing the provider’s information. Thanks to the design system, component library (and the team’s tenacity), the new product was launched in a record time of 5 months.
The pattern library allowed developers to reuse complex pieces of UI like short forms, pop ups, and tables, with a designer QA’ing the design before development.
Lessons learned
- “you can do this on your own time” “we are not a design/product led org” – How manage up, initiate projects out of necessity, and get them prioritised
- Set and communicate time limits
- Establish clear governance process
- Experiment and iterate
- incompatible tech stacks
