Summer Health
Summer Health is 24/7 pediatric care — a way for parents to text a doctor instead of spiraling through WebMD at 2am or waiting a week for a sick visit.
The challenge
Most pediatric care options are slow, confusing, or intimidating.
Parents are stressed, their kid is sick, and the system asks them to navigate phone trees and portals designed by people who apparently hate parents.
Summer Health needed to feel like the opposite of all that — simple, warm, and fast enough to actually help in the moment.
What I did
I joined as the founding designer and built the first version of the Care App alongside the founding team. That meant defining design principles, shaping the early brand, and designing every parent-facing flow from scratch — onboarding, messaging, urgent care, records.
As the company grew, I moved into Head of Design. I evolved the brand, led design across everything we shipped, and brought in external designers to scale our work across product, marketing, and brand.
Designing for one-handed parenting
Here's the thing about designing for parents: most of them are using your app while holding a sick kid. They're tired, worried, and not reading your clever microcopy. Every screen has to work under those conditions.
I spent a lot of time talking directly with families and watching where confusion or hesitation showed up. That research shaped a few non-negotiables:
- Reduce cognitive load. If a parent has to think about what to do next, we've failed.
- Use language that lowers anxiety. Clinical accuracy matters, but so does tone.
- Keep actions obvious. No hunting, no guessing.
- Assume distraction. Build flows that work even when attention is fragmented.
These aren't just principles — they're the actual filter I used for every decision.
Designing around principles
Early on, I wrote a set of design principles to keep us grounded. They're not decorative. They're what we reach for when we're arguing about scope or copy or whether a feature is worth building.
Simple but warm. Parents come to us stressed. Every interaction needs to be easy to understand and delivered with a gentle tone. We reduce complexity — never add to it.
Default helpful. Anticipate what parents might need before they ask. Stay one step ahead.
Action-oriented. Parents are here to solve a problem. Help them move forward quickly, without dark patterns or unnecessary steps.
Trustworthy. Trust is the backbone. Communicate with clarity, avoid uncertainty, and create an environment where parents feel safe making decisions.
Deeply personal. Parents trust us with their most important relationships. Honor that.
Human connection. Behind every message is a real parent looking for a real human. Make empathy core to the experience.
Brand and visual language
I shaped the core brand system — warm typography, a calm color palette, and a tone that feels human instead of clinical.
For illustrations, I worked with Tim Gilligan to define a style that's friendly and clear, then evolved it with Celia Vera as the brand matured. I also curated imagery that feels authentic rather than stock-photo sterile — so product, marketing, and social all speak the same language.
Marketing and web
With Celia, I designed landing pages, campaign kits, and printed materials that explain the service clearly and build trust with skeptical parents. (Healthcare marketing has trained people to expect the worst.)
Together with Tim and Aaron Rolston, we rebuilt the website from scratch — faster, clearer, and aligned with how parents actually search for pediatric information.
App experience
Led the design of the full product experience — from onboarding to chat to medical records — creating something that feels simple on the surface but supportive in all the moments that matter.
What changed
- Parents can now start a conversation and get a response in minutes, not days.
- The communication patterns are warmer and clearer — less clinical, more human.
- Engagement went up because flows are predictable and don't waste attention.
- We built a design foundation that scales — product, marketing, and support all work from the same system.
- The principles I wrote still guide decisions as the team grows.
At every stage, the goal has been the same: make pediatric care feel calm, clear, and available whenever parents need it. That promise is only possible because CareOS gives pediatricians the tools to deliver fast, consistent care behind the scenes.