Design that connects the dots.
Michelle Matthews
Product, design, and research for health and social good companies.
Selected work
A wearable, its companion app, and the design system behind them, for a new kind of hardware product now in beta.
Research-led redesign of the path from website to first appointment for a pediatric mental health service.
Redesigning a content-heavy wellness app for discovery, engagement, and retention.
Taking an iconic consumer brand into clinical care. A 0-to-1 digital therapeutic for people with chronic conditions.
Research, onboarding, and the in-between states of a top-grossing sleep app.
Brand identity and marketing site for an AI cancer information product.
Clear, calm, and designed to turn users into believers.
I design for moments that carry weight: someone deciding whether to trust a new product, learning an unfamiliar device, or short on time and patience. The goal is that they feel oriented the moment they open it and know they're in the right place. The bar is the best consumer apps: plain language, one idea per screen, and a clean, modern visual system calm enough that the important thing is obvious.
I do my best work with my hands in it, and AI is part of how I work every day. I run the study, map the service, build the system, prototype and ship in code with Claude, and stay with the copy and edge cases until it's live.
- Research and discoveryDiary studies, walkthroughs, and co-design, sized to the decision.
- Service designJourney maps and blueprints that put users, operators, and support teams on one page.
- SystemsDesign and content systems I've stood up and maintained, so teams ship quality quickly.
- Interaction and visual craftClean, minimal UI: restrained type, color with a job, data that reads at a glance, and states designed down to the loading screen.
- Cross-functional leadershipEngineering, legal, brand, and domain experts as partners, not reviewers.
- AI-informed workflowClaude and agents from research synthesis to production code.
Experience
Confidential: wearable and companion app, from research through beta and a design system. BetterSleep: growth squad lead on onboarding and retention. Imagine Pediatrics: virtual and in-home pediatric care for children with special health care needs. Kalya: meditation app pilot from design through production. Quilt: grief support community MVP. Radical Health: brand identity and marketing site.
Pediatric mental health care. Led the redesign and shipped it in 9 weeks: completion from 35% to 65%, account creation from 16% to 29%, member trust from 4 to 8.75 out of 10. Built the design function (team of 10), research practice, and design system, and led the rebrand.
0-to-1 design for Headspace's first clinically validated product, a 12-week coaching program for chronic migraine. Designed its modular content system, ran a service dress rehearsal and Cedars-Sinai co-design, and worked on the headspace.com redesign.
First design hire for a two-sided wellness marketplace. Research surfaced a trust problem that led to a rebrand and redesign around safety.
In-home primary care. Consumer apps on iOS, Android, and web, a provider iPad app, and an internal EHR.
Tone It Up: 0-to-1 fitness app, 100k+ paid subscribers. Storybook: redesign, 56% more content starts. Ferly: 60% lift in conversion.
- MSW, NYU Silver School of Social Work
- BA, English and Gender Studies, SUNY Buffalo
- Taught UX and inclusive design at UCLA
- Before design: social worker and journalist
- End-to-end product design
- Mixed-methods research
- Interaction and visual design
- Design systems
- Content design and plain language
- AI-assisted prototyping
- Designing for trust