A few things I learned from working alongside health and wellness startups

🧬 Make science accessible

When we worked with Cheryl from Tiny Health, she shared a very valuable insight. We needed to educate people first on the importance of gut health at the forefront of the marketing site. In other words…why does it matter to you? What are the data and clinical studies that could back it up? Our roles as creatives are to make sure the scientific information is interpreted accurately, yet is also easy to digest and relatable to your specific audiences.

💬 Founding team = first users’ insights

We often see the founding teams create health products because of their own experiences. This can be due to a struggle to find a better solution, or they see an opportunity to improve it from their own experience or friends'/family’s recoveries. When we worked with early startups like Juniver, an eating disorder recovery product, we had limited user feedback since the product was still under development, but we were able to navigate the brand emotions by holding continuous conversations with the founder Emilie, and her team about their personal journeys.

🏥 Work with health systems in mind

When we worked with co-founders Carly and Afton at Modern Fertility, we made sure the brand language and design needed to speak not only to the customers/ patients, but also to the clinical community. Although some of us might look at alternative solutions, clinical physicians still play an important role in our health decisions. From downloadable test results to data representations, we need to build trust with the health systems from day one.

🤷🏻‍♀️Design for everyone means no one

Nowadays a lot of health products can benefit everyone, especially preventive care. But we must identify an aspirational target or group of customers or community that will rally around your brand and product when you are new in the market. Find and design around your (niche) influencers first, and then everything will follow.