Design Audit Findings

Catastrophic Failures (High Impact)

• Finding: Unclear task support & abysmal color contrast (< 2.0) violated WCAG and destroyed usability.
• UX Solution: I rearchitected the onboarding to only ask for essential information and implemented a high-contrast, AA-compliant color palette with light/dark mode.
• Brand Solution: The new playful yet accessible color scheme (pink, mint, orange) replaced the stressful, low-contrast UI, making the brand feel supportive, not broken.

Structural Failures (Medium Impact)

• Finding: Illogical mental models mixed categories (e.g., dog, animal) and scales (solo vs. world), creating cognitive dissonance.
• UX Solution: I introduced a consistent intensity scale for quests (small, medium, large). New users start with small, solo-able quests; larger community-based quests unlock after building skills and connections.
• Brand Solution: The new 7 thematic categories (Explore, Share, Play, etc.) are logical, scannable, and reinforced with custom icons containing hidden hearts, making the system feel cohesive and intuitive.

Polishing Enhancements (Low Impact)

• Finding: Long category names truncated and failed visual scanning, especially with accessibility text scaling.
• UX/Brand Solution: I established a clear typography hierarchy and renamed all categories to single, powerful words (e.g., "Play," "Explore"). This worked hand-in-hand with the new icons to ensure quick recognition and scannability for all users.

Orignial Design

A series of eight screenshots demonstrating the app's original tedious onboarding process: intro, survey, tutorial, and mandatory sign-up. This sequence represents a significant front-end investment required before a user can even try the app to see if it's valuable to them.

The original onboarding suffered from two core failures:

• A Deep Violation of User Expectations: In a modern app ecosystem, users have a built-in mental model for how onboarding should work. They expect a 'try before you buy' experience—a chance to quickly assess an app's value before investing significant time. Forcing users through a long, mandatory process before any interaction violated this fundamental expectation, creating immediate resentment and drop-off.
• The 'Why Now?' Problem: The extensive survey asked deeply personal questions at the worst possible moment: before the user understood the app's benefit or trusted the platform. This felt invasive and random because the user couldn't see how this data would be used to improve their experience. It was a tax with no visible return on investment, making it feel useless from the user's perspective.

Early Prototype

The first redesign draft simplifies the process. It keeps role selection and a simplified spine injury section, then immediately lets the user try the app via an active tutorial instead of passive instructions. Sign-up is made optional and moved out of the onboarding flow, allowing users to experience basic functionality without commitment.

My redesign was guided by core principles of cognitive psychology and modern UX:

• Leverage Existing Mental Models: I assumed users are experts in using apps. The interaction, picking and finishing quests, is a familiar pattern. The onboarding didn't need to teach how to use the app; it needed to sell why this app was valuable for their specific partnership.
• The Principle of Least Effort: The goal was to minimize the barrier to the first moment of value. By making sign-up optional and front-loading the active tutorial, the app respects the user's time and intelligence, allowing them to engage on their own terms.
• Just-In-Time Information: This draft began the crucial shift away from asking all questions upfront. It introduced the concept of gathering information only when it's needed to unlock a specific, desired feature, making the request feel relevant rather than random.

Final Design

The final prototype solves a major UX failure: inequity between partners.

Instead of only the disabled partner filling out a lengthy survey about their body, both partners are treated equally. Both can select disabilities they struggle with. The clinical terms "care partner" and "patient" are replaced with the partners' actual names and the equitable roles of "Supporter" and "Groover," allowing them to define their partnership based on their strengths. The survey only appears when a feature actually needs it.

The final prototype wasn't just a usability fix; it was a strategic alignment with the company's long-term vision to support all types of partnerships, not just spinal injury.

• ‍From Binary to Spectrum: The old model of "Care Partner" and "Patient" was a rigid binary that failed to capture the nuanced reality of how partners support each other. My solution of "Supporter" and "Groover" is fluid. Anyone can be a supporter in one area (e.g., physical tasks) while being a groover in another (e.g., neurodiverse planning). This flexibility was essential for scalable growth.
• ‍Solving the 'Why Now?' with Purpose: The survey was no longer a pointless tax. It became a key to community and relevance. The data directly filters users into community chats (e.g., "Physical Disability Supporters" or "Neurodiversity Groovers"). Now, users understand the why: sharing their challenges connects them to a tailored support network. The question is no longer "Why are you asking this?" but "Which community do I want to join?"
• ‍The Qualitative Result: The new flow transforms the onboarding from a bureaucratic hurdle into an empowering setup ritual. Users aren't just providing data; they are curating their own experience and defining how they want to give and receive support within the app's ecosystem. This directly builds trust and investment in the platform from the very beginning.

Personal Journal

The personal journal function was redesigned for clarity and utility. I implemented a vertical layout optimized for mobile scrolling, consolidating the timeline and note-taking features into a single, coherent history.

A key user request was to track how quests affected their mood (a beloved feature from the old system that was previously isolated and disconnected). The new journal integrates mood recording directly alongside the quest's symbol and name.

Critically, it only displays the information the user provides; it removes the frustrating blank template for photos, presenting their data in a pleasant, streamlined way. Furthermore, entries are color-coded by quest type, allowing users to visually scan their history to identify patterns and habits in their well-being at a glance.

Community Connections

The community feature is fundamentally about constructing and maintaining human connection. The partner chat is more than just texting; it's a dedicated space for relationship-building. Partners can give specific feedback on quests and see which ones each other favorited, providing immediate, non-verbal insight into what truly affected their significant other.

The global communities are designed to leverage a built-in advantage: creating a safe place to ask questions that might not get time in a clinical setting. These spaces are moderated by clinicians who recommend the app to their patients, adding a layer of medical oversight. This allows for intervention—guiding users to a hospital or crisis center when necessary—ensuring accountability and keeping people safe when they are most vulnerable. Ultimately, these communities provide a rare and crucial outlet: a place to get advice from others who share the same point-of-view, to vent frustrations in a healthy way, and to process difficult emotions without the risk of lashing out at a partner or turning to self-harm.

Cognitive Accessibility Multi-Inputs

One of the key accessibility challenges was ensuring the interface was usable for individuals with cognitive differences, including those with brain injuries common alongside spinal cord injuries. My solution was a multi-input UI system for core actions.

Each category uses three distinct cues:

• A symbolic icon for visual processors.
• A unique color/value for those who differentiate by contrast.
• A simple, action-oriented title ("Explore," "Sharing is Caring") for text-based processors.

This triple-redundancy ensures that if one cognitive pathway is compromised, others are available to successfully communicate the option's purpose. This creates a more robust, forgiving, and inclusive experience for every user, embodying the principle of Universal Design.

Sensory Accessibility Contrast

While the multi-input system solved for cognitive clarity, the visual interface itself posed significant physical barriers. The original design used low-contrast colors and problematic color pairings that caused eye strain and were illegible for users with low vision or astigmatism.

Our redesign tackled this on two fronts:

• Enforcing Contrast: We implemented a strict color palette that met WCAG AA standards across all text and interactive elements.
• Providing Autonomy: We gave users a choice between a light and dark theme, allowing them to select the contrast environment that best suited their individual visual needs, transforming accessibility from a mandate into a user-controlled feature.

Physical Accessibility Dexterity & Strength

Completing the accessibility trifecta, the final overhaul addressed physical accessibility. The original design placed critical navigation buttons at the top of the screen, a difficult reach that requires significant grip strength and precise dexterity. I relocated the entire navigation system to a bottom navigation bar.

This strategic move serves three key purposes:

• One-Handed Use: It places every primary function within the natural 'thumb zone,' making the app fully operable with one hand.
• Leveraging Strength: It utilizes the hand's stronger muscles for stability, reducing fatigue for users with weaker grip strength.
• Applying Fitts's Law: The targets are not only larger but also spaced farther apart, providing a larger margin of error. This is critical for users with conditions like quadriplegia, where fine motor accuracy can be impaired, ensuring that every action is intentional and successful.

This change transforms the app from a physically demanding tool into an effortless extension of the user, ensuring that motor impairments are not a barrier to connection and support."

Designing Beyond Compliance (ADA and WCAG 2.2 AA)

For me, accessibility isn't a separate checklist to be applied at the end of a project. It is the foundational principle upon which all good design is built. ADA and WCAG 2.2 AA guidelines represent the bare minimum legal and technical requirements. My goal is to not just meet these standards, but to far exceed them by designing experiences that are inherently intuitive, flexible, and usable for everyone.
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‍My approach integrates core accessibility principles directly into the architecture of the product:

• Clarity Over Complexity: I design self-explanatory interfaces that don't rely on supplemental ARIA tags or alt text to convey critical meaning. The important ideas are baked into the core user experience, making them available to all users by default.
• Cognitive Empathy: My designs prioritize reducing cognitive load through consistent patterns, clear information hierarchy, and predictable workflows. This benefits everyone, especially users with cognitive disabilities, ADHD, or those who are simply distracted or stressed.
• Universal Usability: By building for the broadest range of human ability and context from the very first sketch, I create solutions that are more robust, elegant, and user-friendly for all. This results in a higher standard of usability that often renders basic compliance a natural byproduct, not the primary goal.

The designs in this case study aren't just "WCAG compliant"; they are crafted to provide a seamless and superior experience that acknowledges the vast spectrum of how people see, think, and interact with the world around them.

Logo Exploration

An important theme in their brand was treating both partners as equals by not infantilizing the disabled partner or treating the caretaker partner as a babysitter.
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This logo shows that by having the fish with the full tail and fish with the weaker tail both creating the heart, as a metaphor for both partners showing up in the relationship in the ways that they can.

The other metaphor is that with chronic conditions, there is an ebb and flow of good and bad days. So the fish swim with the currents and adjust as needed to restore balance when they can like yin/yang.

Handcrafted UI for a Human Feel

To further distance the brand from a sterile, clinical feel, I created all UI assets by hand. This intentional imperfection provides an organic, playful quality that reinforces the app's human-centric purpose.

Each of the seven theme category icons contains a hidden heart and features a darker, more solid body for consistent visual weight and better contrast. This small, discoverable detail reinforces the core message of love and connection in every activity.

The navigation system continues the brand's fun, nautical theme with custom icons, creating a cohesive and immersive world for the users to explore together.

Branding Direction

Throughout the branding process, I presented the client with a range of directions, from more conservative to openly playful.
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At every decision point, from color samples to shape language, they consistently gravitated toward the option that was the most fun, bright, and full of whimsy. This unanimous and enthusiastic choice validated our strategy to move decisively away from clinical imagery and toward a brand that celebrates joy and connection.

The result is a cohesive identity system of playful icons, a vibrant palette of pink, mint, and orange, and organic shapes that together create an experience that feels less like a medical tool and more like a shared adventure.