Dignity as a design requirement
Most UX failures are inconvenient. At Memorial Sloan Kettering, they’re measured differently. The patients using the care coordination system I designed were navigating cancer treatment — scheduling appointments, communicating with care teams, understanding complex treatment plans, managing insurance, maintaining some sense of normalcy and control over their own healthcare journey.
The design challenge wasn’t technical complexity. It was emotional reality. People who are frightened, exhausted, and overwhelmed don’t have patience for unclear information architecture. They don’t have bandwidth for interfaces that make them feel like a patient number rather than a person. And they don’t have the luxury of calling support when the app doesn’t work.
Building this from the ground up meant working within one of the most mature research organizations I’ve encountered. I worked closely with a dedicated UX research team, grounding every design decision in how patients actually behaved — not how we assumed they would.
Scheduling flows, care team communication, treatment plan comprehension, access to the full MSK hospital network — all of it had to work under conditions of maximum cognitive load and emotional stress.
Across the scope of this app, from the first appointment booking to ongoing healthy lifestyle options, the through-line was the same: this person is going through something serious, and the interface is not allowed to add to that burden. Clarity is care. Simplicity is respect. Getting it right is not optional.
The stakes of poor UX are never just usability scores. In healthcare, in finance, in any domain where the system touches people’s real lives, design is a form of responsibility. You build it like it matters, because it does.