Map the complex regulatory landscape before designing. Identify which government policies, industry standards, and business constraints will impact your product. Share this map with everyone on the team to ensure compliance is built into the design process from day one, not bolted on at the end.

Begin your design process with the most challenging scenarios and edge cases. By solving for extreme situations—whether they're rare medical emergencies, complex comorbidities, or high-stress environments—you create a foundation that naturally accommodates standard use cases. Use real patient and provider stories to ground these extremes in reality.

Go beyond traditional usability testing by recreating real clinical environments and scenarios. Run your prototypes through actual patient journeys with care team members in realistic conditions—including interruptions, emergencies, and system failures—to validate solutions under pressure.

Identify and categorize every point of resistance in the current workflow: cognitive (confusion, decision fatigue), emotional (anxiety, frustration), physical (repetitive tasks, movement), and systemic (handoffs, documentation). This creates a prioritized roadmap for where design intervention will have the greatest impact.

Analyze and simplify the complex decision trees that providers and patients navigate daily. Map out key decision points, identify cognitive burdens, and design interventions that reduce mental load. By creating clear pathways with the right information at the right time, we transform overwhelming choices into manageable decisions that improve care outcomes.

Conduct structured workshops with diverse stakeholders to identify and address healthcare disparities through design. Bring together patients from underrepresented communities, advocacy groups, and providers serving vulnerable populations to evaluate your concepts. Document actionable insights that transform equity from an abstract goal into concrete design requirements throughout your development process.