Designing Daily Bloom
Helping people with psoriasis stay on a treatment they usually give up on
The treatment works, but patients stop using it.
Dr. Reddy’s asked for a companion app for its at-home UV-B device. The device handles the dose. The app had to cover everything else about living with a lifelong, visible condition.
“I barely go out anymore. People stare at my skin, and I can’t even wear what I like.”A patient, in our interviews
How might an app make patients want to come back tomorrow?
Talking to 16 patients before designing anything
Most of the hard parts weren’t medical
Apps came out during flare-ups and went away when symptoms eased.
Indian diets, busy parents and caregivers, people staring. Next to all that, the medicine was easy.
Every app tracked symptoms. None of them asked what it’s like to live with psoriasis.
Ashish, 28The Resilient Go-GetterEnergetic, fitness conscious, social. Flare-ups get in the way of his lifestyle, and strict routines frustrate him.
Needs flexible care and motivational tracking→ Gets the UV sessions card on Home
Seema, 36The Overwhelmed MultitaskerProfessional and caregiver. No time for appointments; stress triggers her flares.
Needs simple routines and meal planning help→ Gets the Diet plan card on Home
Ravi, 56The Experienced WarriorTwenty years in. Skeptical of new treatments; avoids social events.
Needs discreet, personal coaching→ Gets the Wellness card on HomeTurning the themes into design principles
A brand mark from a psoriasis plaque
Built on Theme 03: apps ignore the personBasing the brand on the condition
The raised psoriasis plaque became the brand mark. It sits on the splash screen and flattens a little with every onboarding step, so the brand feels familiar instead of clinical.
Ending on a score instead of a feature tour
Onboarding ends with a personal Skin Health Index. It gives people a baseline, and a reason to come back and watch it change.
One screen, three first actions
Built on The three personasA site map built around five jobs
Most health apps are organised around clinical categories. We organised Daily Bloom around what people are trying to do when they open it.
A Home card for each persona
Each card on Home answers one persona’s need: UV and the photo journal for Ashish, the diet plan for Seema, a low-effort mood log for Ravi.
Designing for edge cases
The UV card had to handle four states without breaking the three-minute routine. Each one tells the patient exactly what to do next.
The highest-stakes feature
Built on Safety first, then habitPairing a medical device without a manual
Four steps, each with a clear fallback, so a patient opening the box at home isn’t stuck at the first Bluetooth prompt.
Showing dosage on a body map
Dosage became a body map. After each session a photo goes into the journal, so progress is visible between dermatologist visits.
Week 101/02
Week 208/02
Today15/02
Built for Indian kitchens instead of calorie counts
Built on Theme 02: care is cultural“I just want to eat what I like”
That was the first thing a patient told me about food. So we didn’t build a calorie counter. Recipes are built around Indian meals and checked by clinical nutritionists.
Logging a meal in 15 seconds, even when you ate something else
Pick the meal, confirm the portion. If they ate something else, one more tap logs what they actually had.
Challenges that forgive a missed day
Streaks reward consistency without punishing breaks, because chronic care is unpredictable.
Three states of a 15-second log
The plan suggests a meal, but people log what they actually ate. Each state has one main action, and none of them tells you off.
Four taps instead of a therapy app
Built on Theme 03: apps ignore the personShipping the smaller version
I wanted journaling, a peer community and therapist referrals. The clinical team questioned whether a UV companion should go into mental health at all, and they had a point.
What shipped was four-tap mood logging with coach-reviewed content, averaging 2.6 entries a week by week eight.
Usability testing
Six patients, eleven tasks, moderated on Zoom. 350+ observations in Miro became 50+ insights and eight fixes. We shipped the fixes, then ran the same tasks with the same six people.
The app got easier to use, but that doesn’t mean people wanted to use it more. And since we tested the same six people twice, some of the gain is just them knowing the app better.
Eight weeks after launch
Before any screens existed, we agreed with Dr. Reddy’s on what success meant: adherence as the north star, device setup as activation.
What I’d do differently
Forgiving streaks were meant to keep the Experienced Warrior from dropping off. That group still dropped off most. Someone twenty years in doesn’t want a streak at all.
Every persona got a card, which meant nobody got a home screen that was really theirs. The braver call would have been to pick the one behaviour that most needed to change and build the whole screen around it.
The Skin Health Index was the reason to return, the gate to device setup and the coach’s baseline. Three of six participants got stuck on it. Splitting it up would have added a step, but fewer people would have got stuck.
People don’t usually quit health apps because the app is bad. They quit when it stops feeling personal. We designed Daily Bloom for the patient on day 60, when the main reason to open it is that it still knows their history.
