The CEO and founder of Caringsphere planned to build an app to improve attendance at well-child visits by strengthening provider-caregiver relationships. The company had an extensive feature wishlist based on academic research, but the predicted build cost was massive and would be difficult to recoup through provider office sales. I was asked to consult on the the buildout and user experience design.
• Diagnosed foundational misalignment between product vision, user behavior, and market realities
• Reframed the project from “build a data dashboard” to “define a viable product that solves the right problem”
• Equipped the founders with tools for prioritizing features based on feasibility and real-world impact
• Delivered direct strategic guidance that prevented a likely $500K misstep and clarified the business case for investors
I started by mapping stakeholder needs and building as-is/to-be scenarios grounded in CaringSphere’s existing research. Through this process, I created journey maps that surfaced critical barriers that had been overlooked.
These insights revealed that the team’s plan to boost well-child visits missed deeper behavioral and logistical barriers. I reframed the problem space, shifting the conversation from “how do we display this data?” to “what actually drives attendance, and who needs support?”
This shift allowed CaringSphere to redirect their strategy toward a more feasible and impactful MVP that would address caregiver pain points and could realistically be adopted by providers.
To help the business owners understand caregiver pain points, including those their app might not address, I created “As-Is” and “To-Be” journey scenarios. I visualized the caregiver journey to highlight friction points the team’s original solution wouldn’t resolve. These maps became a shared artifact for decision-making across product and business.
A key insight from this was that missed visits often stemmed from logistical overwhelm, not lack of motivation. This could still limit attendance at well-child visits even if the app succeeded in strengthening caregiver–provider relationships.
These journey maps highlighted risks to their business model, which depended on maximizing visit attendance.
After reviewing these business risks with the CEO, I worked with the founding team to map their desired features on a prioritization grid.
This helped the team identify low-effort, high-value features, like immunization tracking and developmental milestones resources, that could deliver early wins and investor confidence. I recommended the next step be gathering input from low-income caregivers to better understand the barriers and motivators affecting well-child visit attendance.
With my help, CaringSphere was able to clearly define their MVP by focusing on the highest-impact, most feasible features. With a stronger business case and clearer positioning, the founders went on to have more successful investor meetings and ultimately sold the company to the University of Maryland Medical Center.
As a clinician, I had years of practice to delivering hard truths to higher-ups, like when a referring physician missed a diagnosis failed to properly medically clear a patient. This project gave me the opportunity to apply that same candor in a business setting, helping founders confront uncomfortable realities about ROI, adoption, and product feasibility.
Go to About