From doctor's note to plain language in one tap.

Context

Most health apps for traumatic brain injury put the patient at the center. In most existing products, the caregiver is a data-entry point, an alert recipient, a viewer. The patient is the subject; the caregiver is infrastructure.

Yet caregivers are the hidden labor force of TBI recovery. They're present at every appointment, every discharge, every bad day. They make consequential decisions on incomplete information, running on five hours of sleep and a fear they can't quite name.

In interviews with 8 caregivers, that person kept surfacing. The spouse who sat in the neurology appointment and didn't understand half of what was said. The adult child logging symptoms at 11pm, not sure whether today's setback is normal or a warning sign. The person who is also, quietly, grieving the version of their loved one who existed before the injury.

My role: product design lead, from the research that surfaced the caregiver, to the strategy behind the reframe, to the interactive prototype. Designing for a real rehab center's caregiver support group kept the work grounded in a real community rather than an imagined one.

Objective

Give the person holding everything together a tool that talks to them. That meant one design constraint above all: not "what can we show," but "what can we take off this person's plate." The caregiver needed:

• One priority at a time, because every extra option costs energy they don't have.
• Medical language they can understand, and questions to bring to the next appointment.
• A way to capture things fast, before a symptom, a question, or a word the doctor used is forgotten.
• Acknowledgment, of both the work they're doing and the grief they're carrying.

Approach

1. A good dashboard was the wrong answer

The original brief was to make invisible TBI recovery progress visible. My first version was a patient-facing dashboard: a resilience score, domain charts, a heatmap. By most measures it was good work. It was also wrong for the person who would open the app.

The shift came when I stopped asking "how do I display this information?" and started asking "who opens this app, and what state are they in when they do?" A dashboard assumes a user who wants control. This user needs relief.

Visual pending

2. Four screens and one button, each with one job

The structure carries the philosophy. This is a guide, not a library.

• Today surfaces one priority: one urgent card, two supporting, and a closing line that speaks to the caregiver instead of reporting on the patient. The home screen welcomes the person rather than summarizing their loved one's metrics.
• Translate turns medical jargon into plain language, always one tap away.
• Note, a floating capture button, is the most important element in the navigation. One tap, from anywhere.
• Journey holds the recovery arc, on demand, for when the caregiver needs perspective. "Week 12 was the turn. You logged it at 7am. You were the first to know."
• Community includes a thread most caregiver apps don't have: for the caregivers who are also grieving. You're allowed to feel both things at once.

Visual pending

3. The translator turns a doctor's note into a plan for tomorrow

Caregivers are shut out of understanding their loved one's care, not because doctors are unkind, but because the language of medicine was never built for them. "Mild improvement in executive function, continued post-traumatic amnesia." The doctor said it, the caregiver wrote it down, and has no idea what it means for tomorrow morning.

The translator explains the note in plain language, says what it means for the day ahead, and sends the caregiver into the next appointment with better questions. The voice matters as much as the accuracy, and that's what makes it a different product from a medical dictionary.

Visual pending

4. Every visual had to earn its place

I ran an explicit audit and cut the stats strip. Gamification on top of grief is a design failure. Everything that stayed had to do emotional work or reveal something invisible to the eye.

The clearest example is the symptom calendar. The same calendar, reframed from a clinical tool observing the patient to a record that belongs to the caregiver, acknowledges their consistency before naming a pattern. The visual is identical. The framing is everything.

Visual pending

5. The language steadies, not just informs

The caregiver needs support as much as the patient does, so the copy is designed to regulate as well as inform: "This is very normal at week 18." "This note is cautiously hopeful." And it names the work no health app acknowledges: "You've shown up 18 of the last 21 days."

Outcomes & Impact

• An interactive prototype of a guided companion for TBI caregivers, built around one priority at a time instead of a dashboard that demands control.
• A translator that turns clinical notes into plain language and appointment questions.
• 17 of 19 nurses who reviewed the prototype wanted to give it to caregivers to use with their patients.
• A category reframe: not a health tracker with a caregiver mode, but a caregiver companion that also happens to track health.

Nurses who would give it to caregivers

89%Nurses who would give it to caregivers17 of 19 nurses who reviewed the prototype wanted caregivers to use it with their patients

Reflection

Designing for a state, not a task

Most product work is task-oriented: the user wants to accomplish something, so we reduce friction. Caregivers in acute situations aren't in a task-completion state. They're in an emotional and cognitive state that governs how they take in information and how much decision-making energy they have left. Designing for the state instead of the task is the whole move, and it's a lens I'd bring to any product where the user shows up depleted, anxious, or grieving.

The bet: this is a new category

Treating the caregiver as the primary user, their observations as the data, their comprehension as the goal, and their emotional state as a design constraint doesn't just change the interface. It changes the category. That kind of reframe only shows up when you're willing to throw out good work because it's aimed at the wrong person.