CaseCares
A medical appointment booking platform for CWRU students.
Role
Project Lead
Timeline
May 2025 - August 2025
Team
1 Project Lead, 2 Developers
Tools
Figma, Muro, Porcreate
✨Overview
With Cleveland Clinic and UH hospitals being right on campus, students need quick reliable ways to find medical care. There is currently no unified student friendly interface for healthcare navigation on campus. Case Cares is a centralized platform for CWRU students to search for doctors, compare providers, and book appointments at nearby Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals facilities.
✨The Problem
Currently, there is no unified system that makes it easy for college students to find and book medical appointments.
Information is scattered across multiple hospital platforms, each with its own process, leaving students to navigate confusing systems that aren’t designed with their needs in mind. Appointment booking can be lengthy and difficult, adding unnecessary friction to something that should be simple.
Key Challenges Include:
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No centralized platform for medical information and scheduling.
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Information spread across multiple hospital systems and platforms.
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Lengthy and confusing appointment booking processes.
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Lack of a system tailored to college students’ unique schedules and needs.
How might we create a unified, student-friendly platform that simplifies access to Cleveland Clinic and UH medical services by consolidating information, streamlining appointment booking, and aligning with college students’ schedules and needs?
✨The Solution
To solve this problem we decided to create a consolidated platform where students can easily search for doctors and hospitals, filter results to match their needs, and book appointments in a streamlined manner. This platform would not only simplify the process but also integrate Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals (UH) into one accessible system for students.
Key Features include:
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Consolidating doctor and hospital information with appointment booking in one place.
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Offering filters by specialty, location, availability, and insurance coverage.
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Integrating Cleveland Clinic and UH into a single, student-friendly platform.
✨Competitive Analysis
To better understand the existing landscape of healthcare booking platforms, I conducted a competitive analysis of three major players: Zocdoc, Healthgrades, and Doctolib. Each of these platforms offers useful features, such as provider search, appointment scheduling, and patient reviews. However, they are not designed with the unique needs of college students in mind.
The navigation often assumes that patients have the time, flexibility, and knowledge to sift through multiple doctors and scheduling systems, which does not align well with student priorities such as convenience, affordability, and compatibility with campus life.
Pain Points
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Too many separate login and booking platforms - no centralized platform
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Interfaces are more medical - not student centric/friendly
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Poor cross system integration between Cleveland clinic and UH
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No cemtralozed filtering unit for stident needs and priorities
Strengths
✅ Robust search functions with filters for specialty, location, and insurance.
✅ Integration of patient reviews/ratings to build trust in providers.
✅ Clear doctor profiles with photos, bios, and accepted insurance.
✅ Established brand credibility and strong hospital partnerships.
Weaknesses
❌ Not designed for students, lacking schedule-friendly filters
❌ Insurance integration is generic, not tailored to student health plans.
❌ High friction for first-time users, with required logins or complex steps.
After a careful review, we decided to center our designs around:
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Unified access : bringing Cleveland Clinic and UH into one platform.
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Student-first filters : scheduling around classes, location on campus, and insurance coverage.
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Low-friction booking : allowing guest browsing and simplified appointment flows.
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Clarity and trust : transparent provider profiles with availability and coverage details.”
✨User Research
How are CWRU students currently managing their healthcare needs on campus?
We wanted to better understand how students feel about navigating medical appointments while balancing academics and campus life. After interviewing several CWRU students across different locations on campus, we identified common challenges and key insights about their experiences with healthcare access.
💡 User Personas
Bheaviours and Needs
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Mobile-first user.
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Prefers guest browsing.
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Relies on filters/search.
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Needs a simple, trusted system.
Maya, Sarah's Mother
Emily is a 20-year-old sophomore majoring in Biomedical Engineering. She lives on campus, juggles a full course load, research responsibilities, and student club commitments. Like many students, she values convenience, affordability, and clarity when it comes to healthcare.
Goals
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Book appointments quickly.
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Find providers near campus.
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Filter by specialty, availability, and insurance.
Frustrations
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Multiple hospital platforms.
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Lengthy booking processes.
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Unclear insurance coverage.
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Systems not designed for student schedules.
✨Design Process
💡 Sketching and Ideation
💡 Iterations
After sketching out different ideas, I went to Figma and started iterating!
From this, I decided to combine the strongest design decisions that could be implemented to the final screen designs
✅ Clear mission statement and grabbing headline
✅ Easily identifiable booking and doctor search buttons
✅ Established credibility
✅ Easily identifiable booking and doctor search buttons
✅ Clear mission statement
❌No attention grabbing headline
❌ No established credibility with "go-to website"
I ultimately chose Iteration 1, as its linear category flow and limited on-screen options reduced cognitive load and made the sentence-building process more predictable for young users. While Iteration 2 offered more flexibility and choices, user testing revealed that the grid of empty slots felt overwhelming and visually cluttered. Iteration 1’s guided approach supports early AAC learners by providing structure and minimizing distraction.
✅ Established credibility
✨Key Features
💡 Filters for quick and efficient doctor searches
💡 Doctor Specialisation Section
💡 Established Credibility
✨Final Screens
✨Reflections
💡 Key Takeaways
Working on CWRU Cares allowed me to see firsthand how deeply healthcare access impacts the student experience. Through my research and design process, I realized that students aren’t just looking for convenience — they need clarity, trust, and a system that acknowledges the realities of campus life. Many of the pain points I uncovered, such as confusing booking flows and scattered hospital platforms, are not unique to CWRU but reflect a larger gap in how healthcare systems serve young adults.
This project reinforced the importance of designing with empathy and highlighted how even small design decisions, like simplifying filters or integrating insurance information, can make healthcare feel more approachable. Ultimately, CWRU Cares pushed me to think critically about how design can bridge institutional complexity and the everyday needs of students.
💡 Next Steps
✅ Refine the booking flow based on feedback to reduce friction.
✅ Explore hospital partnerships for real-time scheduling integration.
✅ Develop a mobile-first prototype to align with student usage patterns.