Downloads were real. Bookings weren’t. Here’s what we found.
Harley had qualified doctors, real availability, and working technology. What it didn’t have was trust. Users arrived anxious about their health, took one look, and left. The sessions revealed exactly why, and how to fix it.
The product worked. The experience didn’t.
Harley connects patients with private doctors fast, cutting through NHS waiting lists. Built by London based Meditech, the platform had everything it needed functionally. Qualified GPs, real availability, seamless booking technology. But users weren’t booking. They’d download, explore briefly, then disappear. The brief was to find out why, and what would actually get people to book their first appointment.
Five sessions. Thirteen games. Six weeks. Every assumption tested.
We put numbers on what the team sensed but couldn’t articulate. Trust at 1/10. Anxiety at 5/10. Confusion at 4/10. Each session built on the last, using proven frameworks to surface what users actually needed versus what the product was delivering. No opinions. No assumptions. Just structured discovery that revealed the gap between working technology and trusted experience.
From emotional baseline to voice principles. Nine documents that changed everything.
The Heartbreak Scale revealed why users abandoned the app: anxiety at 5/10, trust at 1/10, confusion at 4/10. The Aspiration Gap mapped the emotional distance between arriving worried about health and feeling confident enough to book. The Dinner Party surfaced who Harley needed to be. The Voice Sort separated what the brand would say from what it would never say. Each document built understanding that shaped every design decision that followed.
Production ready screens. Every decision traceable to session findings.
We didn’t give concepts. We designed the actual product. Every screen built directly on what the sessions revealed. Where we redesigned an existing product, drag to compare.
Native iOS and Android. Every technical decision explained.
Most healthcare platforms choose React Native or Flutter for speed. The sessions revealed that development speed and user trust aren’t the same thing. React Native’s JavaScript bridge creates latency during booking flows. Healthcare apps can’t afford performance compromises that might be acceptable elsewhere. Harley’s architecture prioritises user confidence: native iOS (Swift/SwiftUI) and Android (Kotlin/Compose), Node.js backend, PostgreSQL preventing booking conflicts, Auth0 for security without custom infrastructure.
A product built for users who actually arrive, not users we wish existed.
Three structural problems resolved before any screen was designed. Complete designs built on corrected understanding. Technical specification reflecting user emotional reality, not default developer assumptions. For the first time, every decision had a reason the team could articulate and defend.
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