Charlie Dowd
A growth product designer / product manager experienced in 0-to-1 health. Looking for his next role in a smart product team where design, experiments, and data are valued. Currently owns research & design in an early startup, working on a tool for hospital teams.
Case study #1
#1
Case study #1
user research • problem design • UI design & testing
Redesigned a medical form which enabled £860k revenue
When hospital teams jot down the 'challenging behaviours' seen in their brain-injury patients, they all do it in different, unstructured ways. But without good data, staff and patients suffer. I spoke to tens of teams who had this problem. I was tasked with digitizing the most clinically robust capture form used in this domain, ensuring a quality UX combined with a clinically safe design.
My role
Outcome
Case study #2
#2
Case study #2
user research • problem design • UI design & testing
Discovered a hidden £10m patient-discharge inefficiency through user research, opening a new market for our tool
Many users from our biggest customer complained that discharging patients from their hospital onwards to specialist care homes was messy and slow. Their siloed teams weren't talking to one another, thus no one knew whether it was avoidable or how costly it was.
My role
Classic investigative journalism; I set out to map this discharge flow end-to-end across wards, discharge teams, councils, and care homes; something no one had previously done. I spent time onsite, built rapport, and built out the jigsaw one introduction at a time. After 2 weeks, I'd lined up a 2h focused discovery workshop with 16 problem experts; managers from local specialist care-homes. Fascinatingly this revealed that the real blockers to discharging complex patients were not what our customer thought it was. In fact it was: missing trigger data, dedicated staffing levels, personalized calming techniques, and cost-of-care indicators. I presented these findings back to the customer.
Outcome
This sized the customer's problem at ~£10m, increasing their trust in us and reliance on our tool. It uncovered a new market; care homes needed the output from our tool. For the first time, our customer saw the full discharge system, triggering internal conversations about accountability, duplication, and team structure, and generating follow-up demand from regional care-home leaders.
Case study #3
#3
Case study #3
user research • problem design • UI design & testing
Won a £15k innovation grant by creating clarity from NHS chaos & solving a single problem really well
I was the first hire at a pre-product startup. No customers; no staff; no offering. The founders had had some warm intros to a mixed senior team at one hospital, and thus, the signal of an under-served need in the neurorehab unit. I was hired as 'founding' product designer to unpack the complaints and find some low hanging fruit for a SaaS solution.
My role
With some nice manners and a good listening face I ran 20 interviews and 2 co-design workshops. A great side effect of my discovery work was that these overworked and frustrated teams felt both heard and excited, which boosted adoption after launch.
Amongst the breathtaking duplication and technophobia that I uncovered, we decided MVP would be to digitise 2 of their paper forms. This was partly political (schmoozing our main contact), partly short-term (knowingly digitising crap to fasttrack unlocking more learning).
Usability testing, clinical safety checks, and
Outcome
My design won a £15k innovation grant and a 12mo pilot in our first hospital.
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