MedTech, Pediatric survey redesign (MHCI+D Capstone)
Role: Product Designer, Project Co-Lead
Timeline: 6 months
Tools: Figma, FigJam, Google Sheets, prototyping, Product strategy, UX research, interface design
Type: Health & Mobile UX Design
PediQUEST is a long-running, NIH-supported survey tool that helps children with serious illness, and the parents who care for them, check in each week on pain, fatigue, mood, and wellbeing. These check-ins help clinicians understand how a child is doing over time, and guide care around what matters most to each family.
Ch 1: A tool that helps the care team but wears families out β©
Research shows feedback through the system improves emotional wellbeing and quality of life. Since completing the survey is linked to better outcomes, usability isn't just design, it's part of the care.
But the current experience tells a different story: PediQUEST feels extractive rather than supportive, caregivers and patients struggle to accurately communicate their lived experience, and long-term engagement with the platform drops as a result.
How might we transform PediQUEST from a clinical survey tool into an emotionally supportive symptom reporting system that reduces burden and helps families accurately communicate symptoms and pain levels?
Closing the gap between reporting symptoms and feeling supported:
Ch 2: Who Are We Designing For .α£.α
Ch 3: How We Are Researching πβοΈ
How did we start?
We evaluated the app through a heuristic evaluation, a Flesch readability score, and a MARS analysis. Together they surfaced broken user control, weak accessibility, high reading levels, and an overall app quality of 3.065 out of 5.
How many questions, and of what kind?
We looked at five PediQUEST surveys, roughly 430 questions total, spanning a Baseline intake, the CPS pain survey, the monthly PMS, a Weekly check-in, and the PQ5β6 survey for ages 5β6.
Those patterns collapsed further: 14 recurring question patterns consolidate into 12 reusable components: frequency scale, severity scale, Yes/No binary, degree scale, rating scale, free text, numeric stepper, duration picker, visual analogue scale, multi-select checklist, single-select, and date picker.
Alongside that, my literature review surfaced the MARS and Flesch frameworks, which we used to score the current PediQUEST app on quality and readability.
What the Competition Does Better?
We studied five analogous products, two direct competitors and three indirect, pulling design patterns, engagement mechanics, and interaction models that PediQUEST could borrow from.
3 Key Themes rose to the top:
Listening to the People Who Live This Every Day
Caregiver Interviews came next, parents of children with severe neurological illnesses, sharing their screens and thinking aloud as they walked through the app, so we could see where things worked and where the process asked more than they could give. With my teammates, I rotated between facilitator and notetaker across sessions.
After we hand-coded each transcript, we reached consensus on 12 themes through affinity diagramming. The top five: Verbiage (51), Visual Design (42), Emotional Wellbeing (39), Caregiver Burden (38), and Data Reports Display (37).
Pulling Six Methods Into One Direction!
We synthesized findings from all methods using an affinity diagram in FigJam, which I led.
Clustered observations
Voted on priority
Identified where methods converged on the same problem
Ch 4: From Findings to Four Principles ββ΄
The research turned directly into four design principles: reciprocal, not extractive, every interaction should give something back; clinically rigorous, not clinically cold, low literacy by default; and designed for exhausted users.
I led ideation and pushed the team through a double diamond framework, starting with low-fidelity sketches that we discussed as a group before converging on direction.
Ch 5: What We Built & Who Tested It π¦π¨πͺπ
With a spring of research tucked under one wing, we as Team Catalyst thought, what should PediQUEST actually look like?
Choosing a visual direction started with two outfits going to a vote with our parents and partners. Parents liked A's bolder blue and bigger text; one wanted real contrast and no curly fonts. Partners picked A, and the caregiver test picked A again.
Building The System that Both Sides Could Use!
I led the design system that followed: built around components that were straightforward for both the dev team to implement and users to interact with, creating the glass UI theme and the core palette, a full range each locked to an exact hex value, with the rest of the components built on top.
What we tested
Part 1 - Observation
Participants clicked through mid-fidelity prototype and did a βthink out loudβ protocol
Part 2 - A/B testing
Participants decided between two different versions of color and typography designs
What each parent showed us, up close:
From mid-fi to hi-fi, the design changed with the feedback.
My ideas carried onto the final designs :)
The clarification popup moved from a universal "?" on every question to a targeted popup.
My ideas carried onto the final designs :)
The "You" space evolved from a stock photo and a fixed goal list into a personalized reflection space.
Presenting to the panel Λ . έππ. έβ
We presented our case study to a panel of industry professionals and UCI faculty, with the team covering introduction and context, methods and approach, solutions and justifications, and recommendations. I helped facilitate the Q&A, selecting teammates best suited to field specific design-consideration questions while answering many myself, a strong close to a project I'd spent so long designing and backing.
Passing the torch comes next. In September a new flock arrives: the UCI dev team. The owl leaves them a map, the annotated hi-fi screens, the design system, and named states for every interactive element, all in one build reference. The one big idea underneath it all: templates, not questions.
