Project Overview
Evidence In Motion is a health care education solutions company that supports student learning in every stage of a health care career. OT Education is a newly launched website that showcases the Doctor of Occupational Therapy (OTD) programs offered by EIM’s partners, offering clear, concise information to help our users - prospective students make informed career decisions.
My Role
UX Designer
Web Developer
Tools
Figma
Webflow
Timeline
Oct 2024 - Present
What I’m Solving
Immediate challenge: Prospective OT students needed a quick and easy way to discover and engage with OT programs at an upcoming major OT conference.
Long-term need: Prospective OT students lacked a centralized, easy-to-navigate platform to understand the full range of OT programs and career paths.
What I’m Aiming For
Short-term priority: Design and launch the OT Education site in time for the conference, drawing students in and walking them through key program offerings.
Long-term vision: Design a welcoming, user-friendly platform that guides aspiring OT students to envision their future careers with confidence.
Design Question
How might we design a user-friendly platform that provides clear OT program details, guides prospective students through an engaging career exploration, and drives visibility and demand for EIM’s OT partner programs?
What I did
Partnered with Product, Marketing and University Partners to define audience, goals and strategy.
Led the UX/UI efforts and web development process from concept to launch.
Developed custom interactions with CSS and JavaScript to enhance visual appeal.
Established a scalable design system to streamline future designs and support long-term growth.
My Impact
User Impact: University Partners team reported the website has significantly increased user inquiries, highlighting its success in addressing user needs and drawing in users.
Business Impact: The website led to a significant increase in inquiries, backlinks, and citations from authoritative sources, boosting organic search visibility and supporting overall program growth.
Design Impact: The design system I created for this site is now being applied across other EIM platforms, driving scalable growth.
User Feedback
Business Discovery
To inform the design process, I first held discovery meetings with project managers, graphic designers, content writers, marketing specialists and university partners to:
Gain domain knowledge in healthcare and education to inform my design choices.
Gather content, graphics, and key information to explore effective design layouts.
Collect insights to define personas and strategy and key messages.
Through discovery meetings, 2 key strategies were defined:
Provide prospective students with clear, accessible information to drive demand for EIM’s OT partner programs.
Increase visibility and authority in OT education to drive interest in EIM’s OT model.
User Interviews
Once I had a foundational understanding of business needs, I conducted remote interviews with six participants — 3 recent grads exploring healthcare careers, and 3 working professionals considering a pivot into Occupational Therapy.
Key insights:
Users need assurance of career outcomes.
Users seek flexible, adaptable education paths.
Users lack familiarity with OT and need real-world stories to build confidence.
User Survey Analysis
To complement qualitative insights, I conducted a targeted survey to understand what specific questions users most care when exploring OT programs. I analyzed and categorized these responses to prioritize high-interest topics and ensure that our content strategy aligned with user needs.
Persona
Elisa, Young Career Seeker
Description: Young adults, likely college students or recent grads, exploring rewarding, stable careers. They’re digital natives comfortable researching career paths online.
Motivation: Seeking a career that’s meaningful, offers job stability, and aligns with their personal values (e.g., helping others, making a difference in healthcare).
Pain points: Uncertainty about career direction, concerns about affordability and duration, worry about employability after graduation.
Kelly, Career Changer
Description: Adults already in the workforce who feel unfulfilled, burned out, or stagnant in their role and are looking to pivot into a more growth-oriented profession.
Motivation: Desire for career fulfillment, improved work-life balance, and professional stability. Interest in health care as a stable, impactful field.
Pain points: Concerned about balancing school with work or family, potential loss of income during education, and doubts about the feasibility of a career change.
Key Message
Through research, brainstorm and ideation, I defined key messages that I wanted to convey to users clearly through this digital launch:
Explore OT and Related Disciplines with Confidence: Provide clear, comprehensive information about OT and similar fields to support informed career exploration.
See the Career Outcomes: Highlight job prospects, 💰 insights, and long-term opportunities to help users envision a secure and rewarding future.
Hybrid Programs for Advancement: Promote our partners’ flagship hybrid accelerated programs while helping users balance real-life goals as they advance their careers.
Learn from Real Practitioners: Offer trustworthy, real perspectives through testimonials, videos, and stories to empower users in making confident decisions.
Turning Ideas into Designs
Based on personas, strategy and messages developed earlier, I brainstormed and iterated on layout options, ensuring information was clear and well-structured while integrating interactive visuals. Below are sample wireframes showcasing the design evolution.
Design in the Details
Instant Clarity
I designed intuitive navigation and homepage previews to highlight key information about OT, career outcomes, salary, and work settings, helping users quickly find what matters most. I also reserved space for brief microcopy and tooltips to deliver just-in-time information, reducing user frustration and reinforcing clarity.
User-Centric Business Growth
I emphasized our partners’ flagship hybrid accelerated programs to support program growth while addressing users’ needs to balance personal and professional commitments. This design approach effectively promotes the programs and meets users’ goals for career advancement.
Authentic Practitioner Voices
I designed video and testimonial sections showcasing real, candid stories from practitioners. Featuring trustworthy content not only helps users make confident decisions through reliable insights but also enhances the platform’s credibility.
Responsive Design
To ensure responsiveness across devices, I used a grid layout for cards on larger screens and horizontal scrolling on mobile to optimize space and avoid long vertical pages. Additionally, the visible hint of off-screen cards encourages users to swipe and explore more content, increasing engagement.
Tailoring Graphics for the Web
Favicon Logo
Site Logo
Design Solution
Explore OT Education - A dynamic platform designed to showcase EIM’s collaborative OT programs with clarity, functionality, and a captivating user experience.
From MVP to Momentum
I established a clear site structure as a strong foundation, but the work continues. I’ve been expanding the platform’s ecosystem to better meet user and business goals. A recent launch is the newly-designed Articles section, which offers medically-reviewed, real-world OT perspectives, encourages repeat visits, and further boosts visibility for partner programs. Moving forward, I’ll continue introducing new features and content to enhance the user experience and drive long-term business growth.
One example of future design enrichments is the Programs section. Right now, the Programs section serves as a structural foundation, but content is limited. I’m working closely with content designers to enrich content. In parallel, one of my on-going projects is to design and build individual micro sites for each partner program. Once approved and launched, these micro-sites will be linked back to their respective entries in the Programs section, creating a connected content ecosystem that enhances user exploration and supports program growth. I’ve displayed some of the micro sites I built in my portfolio, please feel free to take a look at HealthEd Platform Suite.
Scaling Across Programs with a Unified Design System
I developed a scalable design system and brand guideline for the OT platform. This system is now being applied to a new Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) site (currently in iteration). It’s also designed to showcase EIM’s partner programs and serve similar user and business goals. A scalable design system has significantly improved design efficiency, and ensures a cohesive, branded experience across platforms.
Looking ahead, it can be seamlessly applied to future sites for other EIM partner programs, such as Physician Therapy (PT), further strengthening consistency and enabling more scalable growth.
Reflection
Balancing design and web development trade-offs:
The website features a green-blue gradient background for visual appeal. To improve load times and avoid delays, I followed the design manager’s advice and used custom CSS and SVG code to implement the gradient. While this optimized performance, it resulted in a slight color variation and increased development time. Working on both UX design and web development, I realized the importance of striking a balance and making design and development trade-offs when necessary.Building the foundation and planning for growth:
From introducing new design sections like Articles to extending the unified design system across multiple program sites such as OT and SLP, I practiced design with long-term growth in mind. This approach reinforces the importance of scalable design and how thoughtful design can have a lasting impact on business.
