PA
Patients
Revitalizing Care: Elevating Experience for Healthcare
A transformative project with a goal to revamp KFSH&RC Hospital's presence in the Middle East
UX/UI Designer⊹6 Months⊹King Faisal Specialist Research Centre
0Intro
Designing clarity into a complex healthcare ecosystem
KFSH&RC serves very different audiences through the same digital ecosystem: patients looking for care, doctors accessing services, researchers searching for programmes and documentation, students exploring education opportunities, and staff completing administrative tasks.
The challenge was not simply to redesign the website. It was to create an experience that could help each of these audiences find the right information without making an already content-heavy platform even more complex.
My Role
UX strategyInformation architectureNavigationInteraction designUsability testingScalable design patternsUX DesignUI Design
Outcome
A clearer audience-led structure, a scalable navigation model and reusable design approach, with the redesigned experience increasing user satisfaction from 2.8/5 to 4.28/5.
0Intro
Designing clarity into a complex healthcare ecosystem
KFSH&RC serves very different audiences through the same digital ecosystem: patients looking for care, doctors accessing services, researchers searching for programmes and documentation, students exploring education opportunities, and staff completing administrative tasks.
The challenge was not simply to redesign the website. It was to create an experience that could help each of these audiences find the right information without making an already content-heavy platform even more complex.
My Role
UX strategyInformation architectureNavigationInteraction designUsability testingScalable design patternsUX DesignUI Design
Outcome
A clearer audience-led structure, a scalable navigation model and reusable design approach, with the redesigned experience increasing user satisfaction from 2.8/5 to 4.28/5.
01The Challenge
One website. Very different user needs.
The existing KFSH&RC website had grown into a large and complex information environment. Different audiences arrived with fundamentally different goals. A patient might need to find a doctor or treatment. A researcher might be looking for documentation or programmes. A student could be exploring scholarships or courses, while internal staff needed access to administrative services. Trying to serve all of these needs through the same structure was creating friction.
The design challenge became:
How might we make a large healthcare website feel relevant and navigable to several very different audiences without fragmenting the overall experience?
01The Challenge
One website. Very different user needs.
The existing KFSH&RC website had grown into a large and complex information environment. Different audiences arrived with fundamentally different goals. A patient might need to find a doctor or treatment. A researcher might be looking for documentation or programmes. A student could be exploring scholarships or courses, while internal staff needed access to administrative services. Trying to serve all of these needs through the same structure was creating friction.
The design challenge became:
How might we make a large healthcare website feel relevant and navigable to several very different audiences without fragmenting the overall experience?
02Discovery
Understanding where complexity was coming from
Before redesigning individual pages, I mapped the existing sitemap and key user flows to understand how information was currently organised.
This exposed areas where content had become misaligned, journeys reached dead ends, and users had to navigate through unnecessary layers to reach important information.
I combined this with competitor analysis and stakeholder discussions to build a clearer picture of both the structural problems and the people the platform needed to support.
Five core audience groups emerged:
DO
Doctors
Medical professionals accessing services, platforms and administrative information.
RE
Researchers
Users looking for research documentation, programmes and application opportunities.
ST
Students
People accessing educational resources, scholarships and courses.
There was also significant overlap between these audiences. Doctors could also be researchers, and students could already be members of staff. That made a traditional persona-to-section mapping too simplistic.
02Discovery
Understanding where complexity was coming from
Before redesigning individual pages, I mapped the existing sitemap and key user flows to understand how information was currently organised.
This exposed areas where content had become misaligned, journeys reached dead ends, and users had to navigate through unnecessary layers to reach important information.
I combined this with competitor analysis and stakeholder discussions to build a clearer picture of both the structural problems and the people the platform needed to support.
Five core audience groups emerged:
PA
Patients
People searching for treatments, doctors and ways to access KFSH&RC services.
DO
Doctors
Medical professionals accessing services, platforms and administrative information.
RE
Researchers
Users looking for research documentation, programmes and application opportunities.
ST
Students
People accessing educational resources, scholarships and courses.
There was also significant overlap between these audiences. Doctors could also be researchers, and students could already be members of staff. That made a traditional persona-to-section mapping too simplistic.
03UX Strategy
Turning audience complexity into a simpler architecture
The research pointed towards one important strategic decision. Rather than continuing to organise the website primarily around the organisation itself, we grouped the experience into three clearer content ecosystems:
HealthcareEducationResearch
Each became an entry point into a more relevant set of information and services. This allowed us to reduce the amount of competing content users encountered at once while still keeping everything within a coherent KFSH&RC ecosystem. Instead of trying to personalise the experience through complex technology, the information architecture itself became the first layer of personalisation. Users could enter through the area most closely aligned with their intent and encounter content structured around that context.
03UX Strategy
Turning audience complexity into a simpler architecture
The research pointed towards one important strategic decision. Rather than continuing to organise the website primarily around the organisation itself, we grouped the experience into three clearer content ecosystems:
HealthcareEducationResearch
Each became an entry point into a more relevant set of information and services. This allowed us to reduce the amount of competing content users encountered at once while still keeping everything within a coherent KFSH&RC ecosystem. Instead of trying to personalise the experience through complex technology, the information architecture itself became the first layer of personalisation. Users could enter through the area most closely aligned with their intent and encounter content structured around that context.
04Navigation Design
Creating navigation that could scale
Restructuring the information architecture solved only part of the problem. Each of the three areas still contained a large amount of information, so relying on a single global navigation system would quickly recreate the same complexity. I introduced a two-level navigation model:
This created a clearer sense of place and reduced the number of competing navigation choices users had to process at once. More importantly, it gave the experience room to grow without continuously increasing the complexity of the primary navigation.
04Navigation Design
Creating navigation that could scale
Restructuring the information architecture solved only part of the problem. Each of the three areas still contained a large amount of information, so relying on a single global navigation system would quickly recreate the same complexity. I introduced a two-level navigation model:
This created a clearer sense of place and reduced the number of competing navigation choices users had to process at once. More importantly, it gave the experience room to grow without continuously increasing the complexity of the primary navigation.
05Design Systems
Designing a system, not a collection of pages
The scale of the website and the project timeline meant designing every page independently would not have been sustainable. I introduced a reusable component library and templating approach so that common content structures could be designed once and reused across the experience. The templates were informed by the structures uncovered during discovery, helping us remove unnecessary pages, reduce inconsistent layouts and create more predictable ways of presenting information. This shifted the work away from designing isolated screens towards building a repeatable system. It also helped reduce design and development effort while maintaining consistency as the number of pages increased.
05Design Systems
Designing a system, not a collection of pages
The scale of the website and the project timeline meant designing every page independently would not have been sustainable. I introduced a reusable component library and templating approach so that common content structures could be designed once and reused across the experience. The templates were informed by the structures uncovered during discovery, helping us remove unnecessary pages, reduce inconsistent layouts and create more predictable ways of presenting information. This shifted the work away from designing isolated screens towards building a repeatable system. It also helped reduce design and development effort while maintaining consistency as the number of pages increased.
06Visual Design
Bringing the experience and visual language together
I worked closely with the lead UI designer to translate the new experience architecture into a visual system aligned with the KFSH&RC brand. A curved element derived from the organisation's identity became a recurring visual device connecting different areas of the interface. Colour was also used to distinguish Healthcare, Education and Research, giving users another signal when moving between different parts of the ecosystem. Cards, buttons and content structures remained deliberately restrained, prioritising readability and functionality across a highly information-dense website. The result was not simply a new visual layer. The IA, navigation, templates and interface language worked together as one system.
06Visual Design
Bringing the experience and visual language together
I worked closely with the lead UI designer to translate the new experience architecture into a visual system aligned with the KFSH&RC brand. A curved element derived from the organisation's identity became a recurring visual device connecting different areas of the interface. Colour was also used to distinguish Healthcare, Education and Research, giving users another signal when moving between different parts of the ecosystem. Cards, buttons and content structures remained deliberately restrained, prioritising readability and functionality across a highly information-dense website. The result was not simply a new visual layer. The IA, navigation, templates and interface language worked together as one system.
07Usability Testing
Testing the hardest experience first
Mobile navigation was one of the most challenging parts of the experience, so we tested the proposed structure early through remote unmoderated usability testing.
The initial results were encouraging:
-30.9 sec
Find a Doctor
For the task of finding “Find a Doctor,” the average completion time fell from 54.4 seconds on the existing website to 23.5 seconds on the redesigned experience.
All users were able to locate the requested information.
But testing also exposed a scalability problem. Although the navigation worked with the existing content, adding more pages in the future would eventually make the mobile layout difficult to use. Rather than treating successful task completion as the end of validation, I used the finding to redesign the mobile navigation again. The second approach aligned more closely with the desktop architecture while giving future content more room to grow.
07Usability Testing
Testing the hardest experience first
Mobile navigation was one of the most challenging parts of the experience, so we tested the proposed structure early through remote unmoderated usability testing.
The initial results were encouraging:
-30.9 sec
Find a Doctor
For the task of finding “Find a Doctor,” the average completion time fell from 54.4 seconds on the existing website to 23.5 seconds on the redesigned experience.
All users were able to locate the requested information.
But testing also exposed a scalability problem. Although the navigation worked with the existing content, adding more pages in the future would eventually make the mobile layout difficult to use. Rather than treating successful task completion as the end of validation, I used the finding to redesign the mobile navigation again. The second approach aligned more closely with the desktop architecture while giving future content more room to grow.
08Validation & Impact
From usability improvement to measurable confidence
Once the wider experience was assembled, we tested the redesigned website against the existing experience with 10 users representative of the target audiences.
The existing website received an average satisfaction rating of:
+53%
Higher Satisfaction Rating
Relative increase from 2.8 to 4.28 in prototype usability testing.
The improvement gave us a broader signal that the changes to navigation, information architecture, content organisation and interface design were working together effectively. Combined with the navigation testing, it showed that users were not only completing tasks more efficiently — they also felt significantly more positive about the overall experience.
08Validation & Impact
From usability improvement to measurable confidence
Once the wider experience was assembled, we tested the redesigned website against the existing experience with 10 users representative of the target audiences.
The existing website received an average satisfaction rating of:
+53%
Higher Satisfaction Rating
Relative increase from 2.8 to 4.28 in prototype usability testing.
The improvement gave us a broader signal that the changes to navigation, information architecture, content organisation and interface design were working together effectively. Combined with the navigation testing, it showed that users were not only completing tasks more efficiently — they also felt significantly more positive about the overall experience.
09The Solution
What changed
The redesign created improvements across several layers of the experience. The homepage became a clearer introduction to KFSH&RC rather than another dense navigation surface. Pages were restructured to remove unnecessary clutter and empty content states. Dead-end journeys were reduced through more connected user flows. Information architecture became structured around clearer audience needs and contexts. Navigation was simplified through the combination of global and local systems. Application journeys were reorganised to make important actions easier to understand and complete. Most importantly, these changes were built on a reusable structure rather than as isolated page improvements.
09The Solution
What changed
The redesign created improvements across several layers of the experience. The homepage became a clearer introduction to KFSH&RC rather than another dense navigation surface. Pages were restructured to remove unnecessary clutter and empty content states. Dead-end journeys were reduced through more connected user flows. Information architecture became structured around clearer audience needs and contexts. Navigation was simplified through the combination of global and local systems. Application journeys were reorganised to make important actions easier to understand and complete. Most importantly, these changes were built on a reusable structure rather than as isolated page improvements.
09The Solution
What changed
The redesign created improvements across several layers of the experience. The homepage became a clearer introduction to KFSH&RC rather than another dense navigation surface. Pages were restructured to remove unnecessary clutter and empty content states. Dead-end journeys were reduced through more connected user flows. Information architecture became structured around clearer audience needs and contexts. Navigation was simplified through the combination of global and local systems. Application journeys were reorganised to make important actions easier to understand and complete. Most importantly, these changes were built on a reusable structure rather than as isolated page improvements.
10Looking Ahead
Designing for continued evolution
The redesign created a stronger foundation, but it was never intended to be the end state. At the end of the project, the next opportunities focused on using behavioural data and emerging technology to make the experience increasingly adaptive. These included exploring more intelligent search, gathering user feedback and traffic data after launch, and identifying further opportunities to improve patient-facing services. The larger lesson from the project was that solving complexity did not require exposing more functionality. It required creating a structure capable of absorbing complexity while keeping the experience understandable for the person using it.
10Looking Ahead
Designing for continued evolution
The redesign created a stronger foundation, but it was never intended to be the end state. At the end of the project, the next opportunities focused on using behavioural data and emerging technology to make the experience increasingly adaptive. These included exploring more intelligent search, gathering user feedback and traffic data after launch, and identifying further opportunities to improve patient-facing services. The larger lesson from the project was that solving complexity did not require exposing more functionality. It required creating a structure capable of absorbing complexity while keeping the experience understandable for the person using it.
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Have an interesting challenge?