Unifying patient care across a growing product suite.
Fabric Health is a care enablement platform that equips health systems with a suite of white-labeled digital tools to care for patients wherever they are.
YEAR
2023-2026
ROLE
Director, Product Design
CONTEXT
Following a pivotal seed funding round of 50M, Fabric rapidly scaled through acquisitions, integrating Florence (Emergency Room Guide), Zipnosis (Virtual Care), GYANT (Engagement Suite), TeamHealth (Provider management and staffing), and MeMD (Behavioral and Continuous Care) into its ecosystem. As Director of Product Design, I led the efforts to unify these disparate products into a cohesive, scalable experience. This work required tackling challenges like technical disparity, varying product maturity, and the need to balance immediate business priorities with a long-term product vision.
Fabric Health’s Product Design team is:
2023-2026
ROLE
Director, Product Design
CONTEXT
Following a pivotal seed funding round of 50M, Fabric rapidly scaled through acquisitions, integrating Florence (Emergency Room Guide), Zipnosis (Virtual Care), GYANT (Engagement Suite), TeamHealth (Provider management and staffing), and MeMD (Behavioral and Continuous Care) into its ecosystem. As Director of Product Design, I led the efforts to unify these disparate products into a cohesive, scalable experience. This work required tackling challenges like technical disparity, varying product maturity, and the need to balance immediate business priorities with a long-term product vision.
Fabric Health’s Product Design team is:
- Santiago Alonso
-
Michelle Liv
-
Chris Vitalis
-
Chloe Mendoza
- Nuno Costa
CHALLENGE︎︎︎
Tackling fragmentation in a scaling ecosystem
Fabric Health’s product portfolio expanded from a single product, the Emergency Room Guide (ERG), to a multifaceted ecosystem, including:
Virtual Care Platform (Zipnosis)
Two separate apps (Patient and Provider) that facilitate synchronous and asynchronous on-demand care.
Engagement Suite (GYANT)
A message-based AI tool designed for linear, mobile-first interactions with limited scalability.
Provider Directory & Scheduling
A 0-to-1 product designed in-house, requiring seamless integration with client EHRs and launched with one of New York’s largest health systems.
Additionally, these challenges had to be addressed while simultaneously building and growing the product design team.
Fabric Health’s product portfolio expanded from a single product, the Emergency Room Guide (ERG), to a multifaceted ecosystem, including:
Virtual Care Platform (Zipnosis)
Two separate apps (Patient and Provider) that facilitate synchronous and asynchronous on-demand care.
- Update design system and revamp UI with frontend refactor.
- Integration of new features like behavioral health and labs.
- White label system.
Engagement Suite (GYANT)
A message-based AI tool designed for linear, mobile-first interactions with limited scalability.
- Design system update revamp (component audit, etc.).
- UX copywriting / language: integration of chat/LLM based best practices.
- Medical images style unification via AI generation.
Provider Directory & Scheduling
A 0-to-1 product designed in-house, requiring seamless integration with client EHRs and launched with one of New York’s largest health systems.
- 0-1 design.
- Fast iteration, deployed in less than 6mo.
- New design hires and onboarding.
- Expansion of white label capabilities.
Additionally, these challenges had to be addressed while simultaneously building and growing the product design team.
Fabric offers enterprise solutions to 70+ national payers, health systems, and employers across the US.
The acquisitions introduced significant challenges:
- Technical disparity: Products were built on incompatible stacks, making backend and frontend unification a monumental task.
- User experience fragmentation: Patient journeys felt disjointed, particularly for clients using multiple products.
- Varying maturity levels: Each product had different design foundations, from Gyant’s well-developed system to Zipnosis’s fragmented components.
SOLUTION︎︎︎
Unified vision and scalable design framework
To address these challenges, I spearheaded a holistic approach to unify Fabric Health’s product suite while enabling scalability for future growth. The solution revolved around three core pillars:
This strategy laid the groundwork for both immediate improvements and long-term growth, ensuring Fabric Health’s ecosystem could meet the needs of clients and patients alike.
To address these challenges, I spearheaded a holistic approach to unify Fabric Health’s product suite while enabling scalability for future growth. The solution revolved around three core pillars:
- Shared product vision: Developed a "north star" vision to align all teams and stakeholders around a cohesive patient journey, prioritizing seamless transitions across products and scalability for future acquisitions.
- Scalable design system: Created a centralized design system with Figma-based design tokens and Storybook libraries to ensure consistency across styles, components, and patterns while accommodating product-specific requirements.
- Unified team structure: Expanded and formalized the product design team into a hybrid model, combining ownership of individual products with shared processes to foster collaboration and a cohesive design culture.
This strategy laid the groundwork for both immediate improvements and long-term growth, ensuring Fabric Health’s ecosystem could meet the needs of clients and patients alike.
PROCESS︎︎︎
UX/UI audits and vision alignment
The team began with comprehensive audits of all products, identifying key inconsistencies in workflows, styles, and interaction patterns:
From these insights, we crafted a "north star" product vision that prioritized seamless transitions across products for patients, scalability to accommodate future acquisitions, and pragmatic solutions that balanced immediate needs with long-term goals.
The team began with comprehensive audits of all products, identifying key inconsistencies in workflows, styles, and interaction patterns:
- Zipnosis: Independent apps for providers and patients required separate audits and targeted UX improvements.
- GYANT: Preserving its strong accessibility standards while aligning styles with the broader suite was critical.
From these insights, we crafted a "north star" product vision that prioritized seamless transitions across products for patients, scalability to accommodate future acquisitions, and pragmatic solutions that balanced immediate needs with long-term goals.
Scaling the product design team
To handle the complexity of Fabric Health’s growing portfolio, I formalized and expanded the design team:
To handle the complexity of Fabric Health’s growing portfolio, I formalized and expanded the design team:
- Grew the team from 2 to 6 designers with cross-functional skills, ensuring ownership of individual product lines while fostering a collaborative team culture.
- Introduced weekly critiques, a centralized design system in Figma, and clear protocols for collaborating with engineering.
- Industry and B2B research in collaboration with sales (feature exploration, validation of feature requests).
Developing a scalable design system
The unification effort centered on a scalable design system to address both immediate needs and future growth:
The unification effort centered on a scalable design system to address both immediate needs and future growth:
- Built an automated client-color palette generator, ensuring white-labeled products met accessibility requirements.
- Established a Figma library of React components, gradually aligning disparate tech stacks while maintaining flexibility for product-specific requirements. This library was complemented with a new shared Storybook library across dev teams.
- Designed workflows and tokens to accommodate variations across products while streamlining development cycles.
- New user testing framework.
- Provider user research (series of interviews for feature discovery and UX improvements).
- UX Copy language, cross-team collab with marketing and clinical.
Designing from 0-to-1: Provider Directory
The Provider Directory & Scheduling product exemplified our collaborative approach:
The Provider Directory & Scheduling product exemplified our collaborative approach:
- Worked closely with engineering and client stakeholders to address technical dependencies and complex workflows (e.g., provider search, qualifying questions, and scheduling flows).
- Iterative usability testing refined UI components, improving perceived ease of use from 4 to 4.5/5 by implementing subtle but impactful changes like modal overlays.
OUTCOME︎︎︎
Measurable impact across the suite
By the end of 2024, Fabric Health’s unified design approach delivered measurable results:
By the end of 2024, Fabric Health’s unified design approach delivered measurable results:
- Increased adoption of the design system: From 1 product to 3, streamlining cross-product development.
- Reduced design iteration cycles: Post-discovery iterations dropped from 3 to 2, improving delivery timelines.
- Standardized handoff process across products and dev teams.
- Launched a new product: The Provider Directory & Scheduling tool went live with one of New York’s leading health systems.
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