Medication management is one of the highest risk workflows in social care. Designing for this space required clarity, humility and close collaboration with real carers/care admins.

In my most recent role, I led the end to end discovery and strategic definition of a core medication safety workflow used daily in regulated UK care settings.

I was responsible for the discovery phase of Log my Care’s Electronic Medication Administration Record (eMAR) - a safety critical system operating under CQC expectations, used by thousands of carers across the UK to administer, record and audit medication.

The work focused on uncovering the root causes behind:

• medication errors

• stock discrepancies

• incomplete or unreliable audit trails required for regulatory compliance (CQC)

• workflow stress in high pressure care environments

This required designing within strict regulatory, clinical and operational constraints, while still advocating for carers’ real world needs and behaviours.

The goal was simple but critical:

Reduce medication risk, improve accountability and stock clarity, and create calmer, safer workflows that could stand up to inspection, audits and incident reviews.

The discovery work went beyond surface level validation, focusing on how medication was actually administered day to day, where errors occurred, and why.

This gave the team clear, evidence backed direction on how to improve safety and compliance while keeping workflows simple for carers working under pressure.

Impact & Key Results from Discovery Phase

This work didn’t just shape the eMAR redesign, it reshaped how the organisation approaches problem solving and clinical safety.

Clear Problem Definition

Produced a prioritised pain-point model (“Mentioned in X/14 interviews”), giving teams a single, evidence based understanding of what was truly affecting medication safety.

A Unified Understanding of Medication Workflows

Mapped the full journey (Adding, Administering, Updating/Pausing, Stock, Exceptions), aligning PMs, sales, customer service, developers and leadership around shared failures and user needs.

Strong Foundations for Solution Design

Delivered problem statements, JTBD, opportunity areas and success criteria to guide the upcoming redesign.

Surfaced Previously Invisible Risks

Highlighted systemic issues - stock logic gaps, inconsistent audit trails, missing escalation paths - that had been contributing to errors and support load.

Decision Ready Insights and Documentation

Created a concise cross team report and documentation that replaced scattered knowledge with a stable reference for roadmap planning.

What Emerged from Discovery

Care teams were administering high risk medication in a system that could not be consistently trusted.

• Inability to safely edit or update medications

• Missing or inaccurate MAR charts

• Stock inconsistencies and audit gaps

• No clear way to flag issues

• Overwhelming, unclear, or missing alerts

These failures appeared consistently across 14 user interviews and were reflected in support tickets and usage trends.

As a result, medication errors, audit gaps and regulatory exposure (CQC) became systemic risks.

My Role

Timeline: July - October 2025: approx. 3 months

As Senior Product Designer, I led the discovery and problem definition phase:

Discovery and Insight Generation

• Conducted and synthesised 14 user interviews

• Ran 9 internal stakeholder interviews (Across Product, Engineering, Sales, Customer Success, CTO and CEO) to identify patterns, themes, gather constraints and align understanding

• Gathered 69 survey responses from existing and churned users with questions I designed to validate themes at scale

• Proactively reached out to both churned and existing users, building rapport and trust to encourage participation

• Mapped the full end to end medication journey

• Identified and quantified five critical problem areas

• Conducted competitor and market analysis across leading eMAR software to understand common patterns, gaps and differentiation opportunities

Cross Functional Collaboration

• Worked closely with Developers, PMs, Sales, Customer Support and clinical advisors

• Built shared understanding across the organisation

Analysis and Benchmarking

• Compared leading eMAR and medication platforms

• Identified UX patterns, gaps and opportunities relevant to care homes

Foundations for Redesign

• Developed problem statements, JTBD and opportunity themes

• Outlined initial workflow directions for all medication tasks

Alignment and Communication

• Facilitated alignment with the PM and CTO

• Consolidated insights into a single organisation wide source of truth

• Presented the findings and the solutioning plan to the full company in an in-office session to ensure cross-team visibility and buy in (see video and steps below).

Core Solution Directions (Foundations for the Redesign)

I left the organisation before the full UI redesign phase. The work below represents the conceptual foundations the team used to begin solutioning.

1. A clearer, safer Administering Medications structure

• Defined the need for step based clarity

• Identified opportunities for stronger dose checking

• Highlighted ways to reduce cognitive load during rounds

• Outlined safe error handling and missed dose patterns

2. A modernised Stock Management model

• Mapped the ideal relationship between stock, MAR entries and exceptions

• Outlined how stock should consistently reduce after each medication entry to avoid errors and inconsistencies

• Identified the need for simple, guided top up flows

3. A scalable interaction model across medication tasks

• Recommended modular patterns that future features could plug into

• Ensured consistency and longevity across workflows

4. Solution Principles to guide future UI

• Safety first

• Clear, timely visibility of critical alerts

• Reduce cognitive load

• Clarity over density

• Predictable, consistent patterns across all tasks