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.
01
Trust scored 1 out of 10. Users saw “alarmist colours,” “a templated shell,” and no evidence they could actually rely on what they were seeing.
02
After onboarding, users landed in an unfiltered doctor directory. No guidance. No curation. Pure overwhelm when they needed direction most.
03
The app demanded personal health data upfront, before proving it understood why someone was even there. Trust was being asked for, not earned.
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.
- Core Principles The Heartbreak Scale™ 75 min
- Discovery The Aspiration Gap™ 60 min
- Discovery Day One / Day 90™ 30 min
- Brand Personality The Dinner Party™ 15 min
- Brand Personality The Rejection Letter™ 30 min
- Brand Personality The Funeral Speech™ 60 min
- Tone & Copy The Voice Sort™ 40 min
- Tone & Copy Read It Aloud™ 30 min
- Tone & Copy The Word Sort™ 20 min
- Design Principles Design Principles Builder™ 60 min
- Design Principles The Moment Test™ 45 min
- Visual Direction Moodboard Speed Dating™ 15 min
- Visual Direction Opposite Ends™ 10 min
The sessions produced strategy documents, complete product designs, and technical recommendations. Everything needed to build a product people would actually use.
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.
The Feel Factor®
Our proprietary framework applied to Harley. Baseline emotional scores across five dimensions, then target scores every design decision was measured against.
Trust scored 1/10. Users saw “visual credibility issues,” “alarmist colours,” and “a templated shell with no personality.” No trust markers anywhere.
Anxiety dominated at 5/10. Not just healthcare nerves, but anxiety amplified by design choices: negative colours, no guidance, confusing next steps.
The gap between current and target state became the brief for everything that followed.
The Aspiration Gap™
The emotional journey from anxious arrival to confident booking. Maps the three critical moments where users either commit or abandon.
Users arrive asking “Will I be OK? Can I trust these doctors? Can I afford this?” The product must answer these before asking anything back.
Critical moment: when users feel guided by a managed product, not presented with a directory. This wasn’t happening. Users got dropped into doctor lists with zero direction.
Biggest risk: broken trust. If users question the platform’s security or review integrity, everything else becomes irrelevant.
Brand Personality
Who Meditech is, what it refuses to be, and how the personality shows up at every touchpoint.
Five personality dimensions rooted in session evidence: Confidently Understated, A Guide Before a Directory, Transparent by Default, Calmly Human, Listens Before it Speaks.
The Dinner Party revealed someone who notices need but asks permission before helping. The distinction shaped every design and copy decision.
Voice principle: a knowledgeable friend, not a doctor’s receptionist. Authority without stiffness. Short sentences for action, longer ones for reassurance.
Plus 6 more documents in the full engagement
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.
Technical Blueprint
Screen inventory, API contracts, data models, notification architecture. Defines what gets built, not how systems connect. Unambiguous specification, not interpretable brief.
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.
The brief rewrote itself
Three foundational assumptions Harley was built on got reversed through session evidence. The product direction changed significantly, not because we imposed our view, but because the team could finally see what users were actually experiencing.
Development teams had everything needed
Build teams received design files, strategy documents, and technical specification defining architecture, stack, and feature scope. They knew what they were building, how it should feel, and which trade-offs weren’t acceptable.