Charlie Dowd
Growth product designer experienced in 0-to-1 medical SaaS. Keen on experiments, data, & scrappy stuff that gets traction. Currently owns research & design at a neuro-health SaaS startup.
#1
Case study #1
user research • problem design • UI design & testing
Redesigned a medical form which enabled £650k revenue over 3 years from 2 customers
Challenge
When hospital teams jot down the challenging behaviours seen in their neuro-patients (dementia, brain-injury, etc.) they all do it in different, unstructured ways. This makes getting ahead of those behaviours very difficult. Psychologists rely on these observations to determine whether what they're doing is working for that patient, so without it, they're fighting an uphill battle.
Despite this struggle, I spoke to tens of teams like this who all invariably use paper to capture these observations. It's always done by overworked staff in a format that's handwritten, freetext, illegible, irrelevant, sparse, and even if they got everything else right, they go missing.
We wanted to drag this process forward 20 years by digitising and optimising it.
My role
As sole product designer I had to learn exactly how and why it was used; what worked great, what was rubbish. What could we do diferently that would add big value for these users, and differentiate us from competitors. I got onsite at this neurorehab location, ran interviews, observations, speed-dating usability tests, and digitised the paper tool.
Outcome
Enabled £650k revenue over 3 years from 2 customers
Saved the pilot site 1.5x FTEs
Positioned our tool as a trusted standard in neurorehabilitation
#2
Case study #2
user research • problem design • UI design & testing
Made a key reporting workflow 97% faster in 1 day’s work; delighted a big customer before renewal
Challenge
I noticed a pilot customer was regularly printing out 50 in-app pages, then scan-to-emailing each one back into the printer. The email recipient had to then open all 50 emails to download for analysis. This was costing ~4 hours a week. Renewal was upcoming but we had a lot on. My goal as solo designer at a 5-person startup was to deliver some well-timed value without committing full dev resources.
Outcome
I designed a simple UI addition reducing the key workflow from 60 down to 2 minutes, and it took us less than 1 day of resource. I added a “merge multiple documents into 1 PDF” capability using tickboxes and an export button to a table. This unpolished addition preceeded their £50k renewal without us getting distracted.
Dropped the process from ~60 minutes to ~2 minutes (saving ~4hr/week)
Cost under 1 day of resource
Timed with £50k customer renewal
#3
Case study #3
user research • problem design • UI design & testing
Secured £15k Innovation Grant in by Designing & Building a Healthcare SaaS Prototype
Challenge
Joining as the first hire at a pre-product healthcare startup, I was tasked with proving both user need and market potential through a prototype. The goal was to support an innovation grant bid around reducing agitated behaviours in neurorehabilitation.
Outcome
The prototype and evidence won the £15k innovation grant, validating the concept with clinicians and unlocking our startup’s first external funding. To achieve this I sourced neuropsychologists for interviews and usability testing, and built a functional web app using a low-code tool.
Secured £15k of innovation grant
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