Patient Design Studio
Transforming the Clinical Trial Experience Through Patient-Centered Design
As Lead Designer for Medidata Patient Cloud, I led the design leg of the Patient Insights Program, an award-winning initiative to embed patient voices into the software development lifecycle. I facilitated design studios, synthesized insights into actionable assets, and ensured patient perspectives informed product strategy at every stage.
The Challenge
Clinical trials are essential for advancing medicine, but for patients the experience is often confusing, overwhelming, and impersonal. Participants often feel like passive subjects, even though their engagement is critical to a study’s success. Our goal was to deeply understand the patient perspective and design solutions that felt intuitive, compassionate, and human-centered.
Patient Voices
When we asked patients to share their experiences, their words revealed how often they felt unseen, unsupported, or rushed through important decisions.
“My time isn’t valued and it’s difficult to commit to everything without greatly inconveniencing myself and my family.”
Participation placed impossible demands on daily life.
“I don’t have support or feedback after consenting and I feel isolated.”
Patients felt abandoned once the study began.
“I often don’t understand everything I’m signing up for and I don’t know how to get clarity when I’m confused.”
Critical decisions were made without true understanding.
“I don’t have the option to learn at my own pace or style and it’s frustrating.”
Patients had no control over how they learned.
Opportunity & Approach
These perspectives revealed systemic gaps in communication, support, and accessibility. To address them, my team established Patient Design Studios, a series of design thinking workshops that brought together patients, clinicians, designers, product managers, and engineers.
These sessions allowed us to:
Align on project goals and priorities
Map the patient journey, with emotional highs and lows
Sketch innovative ideas to reimagine trial participation
Prioritize features of the new experience
I continued to facilitate similar workshops at the start of each sprint, using them as checkpoints to align on the experience and collaboratively generate creative solutions.
Design Activities
Building on patient insights, we used a mix of research and collaborative methods to translate experiences into actionable steps.
Patient Interviews: 21 participants shared their stories, surfacing emotional pain points, unmet needs, and behavioral patterns.
Journey Mapping: With patients and stakeholders, we mapped trial touchpoints, emotional highs and lows, and gaps in support. These maps became a central tool for alignment across teams.
Co-Creation Workshops: Patients joined ideation sessions to generate concepts for critical trial moments like consent and eligibility screening.
Feedback Sessions: We tested and refined solutions with patients and subject-matter experts to validate directions and reduce friction.
Design Principles: Research was synthesized into guiding principles emphasizing trust, clarity, and empathy, which anchored product decisions.
Patient Journey
The final journey map, built from research and collaborative workshops, captured the patient experience across every stage of a clinical trial. It revealed emotional highs and lows, gaps in communication, and opportunities for better support, and became a critical alignment tool for guiding product development.
Key Insights
Clinical trials often felt transactional during moments that were deeply emotional
Patients lacked sufficient resources and time to make informed decisions
Communication between sites and patients was inconsistent and fragmented
Many participants described feelings of isolation and disconnection: “It feels like there is no one else out there.”
Information was overwhelming, with multiple sources providing conflicting details
Consent and onboarding were rushed, leaving little time for understanding and clarity
Patient Cloud Solutions
The Patient Insights Program, including the design studios, interviews, journey mapping, and feedback sessions, directly shaped the design of Medidata’s Patient Cloud suite. The insights grounded product design in real patient needs, shaping solutions that resolved the most critical barriers to participation.
myMedidata
A patient portal that consolidates study tasks, forms, and video visits into a single experience. It reduces fragmentation and information overload while making participation more manageable.
eConsent
An electronic consent tool that allows patients to review materials at their own pace, flag unclear sections, and return to them with a clinician. It addresses rushed, confusing consent processes.
eCOA
A mobile app for completing study assessments remotely and flexibly. It eases the daily demands of participation and improves accessibility for diverse patient needs.
SensorCloud
A platform that integrates wearable sensor data with patient-reported outcomes. It reduces patient burden while creating a fuller, more accurate picture of the trial experience.
