Designing Better Healthcare

Healthcare technology has accelerated rapidly in recent years, bringing genuine innovation to a category that carries uniquely high stakes. Designing for health demands ethical restraint, deep empathy and an acute awareness that these products sit alongside people at their most vulnerable. The responsibility placed on designers is significant.

To explore what thoughtful, human-centred healthcare design looks like in practice, we spoke with two 2025 Australian Good Design Award Winners approaching this responsibility from different perspectives. 

We sat down with the team at Nakatomi, the venture studio behind Ovum, an award-winning intelligent health journal for women, and Industrial Designer Maoxin Yuan, creator of Sooze, a modular eye care system designed for people living with Keratoconus.

---

Ovum: Interview with Nakatomi 

A lot of health apps are built to measure bodies. Ovum was designed to help people listen to their bodies more intently.

Created with Founder Dr. Ariella Heffernan Marks, Ovum is an intelligent health journey for women. It combines symptom logging, cycle tracking and health data storage with conversational AI, so users can track patterns over time and advocate for better care.

To unpack the thinking behind Ovum, we spoke with Benjamin Bray, Founding Partner, and Jasmine Subrata, Creative Strategy Lead at Nakatomi, the venture studio behind the app. Ovum received the 2025 Australian Good Design Best in Class Award in Digital Design – Apps and Software, recognising Nakatomi’s approach to building bold, purpose-led ventures from day dot.

The impressive interface of Ovum. Image: Supplied 

GDA: Women’s healthcare has historically been fragmented and male-centred. From a design perspective, what did “better healthcare” actually need to look and feel like for Ovum to genuinely challenge that status quo?

Nakatomi: The first thing we did was research every health product out there. The one thing that stood out was there were a lot of cycle tracking apps, a lot of pregnancy tracking apps, a lot of menopause apps. But they treated women as just a uterus and only focused on their reproductive health. We wanted to create a tool that supports women as a whole human, not just their individual parts.

It was also important for Dr. Ariella to fight for change without a brand and product that’s angry or noisy for the sake of it. ‘Quietly defiant’ is our brand essence and was a helpful phrase for us through the design process. We wanted to make an app that serves its purpose and provides real value to the audience in a way that’s better than what’s out there, but with solutions not complaints.

GDA: Ovum isn’t designed as a diagnostic tool, but as a companion that helps women be heard and believed. How did that philosophy translate into concrete design decisions across the interface and user journey?

Nakatomi: Making it chat-first. We made the decision to have chat live on top of the entire experience rather than it just being one page or section of the app; so at all times we’re reinforcing our mission for women to feel heard and believed. We’re trying to encourage people to provide their perspective on their health rather than displaying it to them at all times, which is quite a different way to visualise information. In testing we found that women loved the fact that they recorded and received their information through the conversational aspect. 

Making the experience feel a little more free-flowing, a little less rigid, was super important.

GDA: Healthcare apps often overwhelm users with data. How did your team approach clarity, restraint and emotional safety when designing Ovum’s daily health overview and longitudinal tracking?

Nakatomi: One of the initial design rules we had was that graphs were illegal, to challenge us to find more imaginative and unique ways to show data. Which is hard, because graphs take something complex and simplify it into something that’s easy to see. But we wanted to show women that they’re more than a number, percentage or statistic. So, how do you display complex information without graphs? That was a constant challenge that provided the opportunity to create an interface that’s very unique and highly visual.

We would debate small details for days to find that balance between being official and being personal, acknowledging the seriousness of certain topics without over-indexing in a way that creates anxiety.

GDA: Trust is critical in digital health. What role did design play in communicating privacy, consent and data ownership?

Nakatomi: Being a health app, Ovum operates with the highest standards of privacy and security. But beyond that, the ways we really build trust are by being very transparent about what is used and what isn’t, not forcing any information to be shared, and giving users agency over what they share. One of the things that’s always been really important to Dr. Ariella is allowing women to opt into sharing some of their insights to help further research and improve care for women in the official healthcare system. 

GDA: Ovum integrates memory, history and pattern recognition over time. How did you design for “intelligent recall” in a way that feels supportive rather than intrusive?

Nakatomi: It is easily the hardest part from a technical perspective. The longer you talk to an LLM (Large Language Models) such as ChatGPT, the more it starts to go off track, start making things up, or start forgetting things, because its context is full and it starts to drop stuff off in order to respond.

When you’re building a longitudinal health app, we have to build a custom memory. If you talked about a medication you were on six months ago and now you bring up a symptom, we need to know that it could be linked to that medication. Balancing that constantly is a massive technical challenge, but it’s what makes it feel personal and intelligent, and more valuable than just googling your symptoms.

GDA: Many femtech products are narrowly focused on reproductive health. What design challenges emerged when creating a whole-body health system?

Nakatomi: The challenge with shifting from cycle to whole body is that health is so broad, and different women put more importance on different things. Good user experience and good design is personalised, it feels like it’s made for you. 

One of the ways we did that was we didn’t want to have distinct pages in the app for each section. Since it’s a holistic health partner, we didn’t want you to open the app and be just a cycle tracker, or diet trainer, in different pages. We wanted it to feel connected. Conversation is a massive part of that. The challenge was not making it five apps stitched together, while still feeling like it does a good job at each of those things in one cohesive experience.

GDA: The app supports women across multiple life stages. How did you design a system that could adapt as users’ bodies, priorities and health contexts change over time?

Nakatomi: One of the challenges with building something that is personal and AI-driven is how fluid it is. It adapts entirely to you, but it doesn’t move into a different mode. If you report you’re going through pregnancy, we thought about how best to serve more relevant information and insights based on your needs now without turning it into “pregnant mode.” We try to make the transition so fluid it doesn’t feel like anything’s changed other than how Ovum responds to you.

GDA: Healthcare design often prioritises efficiency over empathy. Where did you consciously slow things down in Ovum and make users feel seen, and why was that important to the experience?

Nakatomi: One thing that was super important was no matter what is said, there’s immediate visual feedback showcasing that you’ve been heard. If you report something as significant as a major diagnosis, or a stubbed toe, or a diet change, or a tough day at the office, you get immediate gratification that it has been captured. 

GDA: Looking beyond Ovum, what responsibility do designers have when working in healthcare? What do you hope this project signals to the wider design industry?

Nakatomi: This was certainly a product design challenge, because of how significant a role it plays in women’s lives and how diverse and nuanced those experiences are.

Strategy was huge for us. We spent a lot of time researching, experimenting, and testing before we moved on to building anything. Strategy sessions on individual features could see us in a room for three days straight challenging and trying everything. Every design decision ladders up to the product strategy and positioning.  This way, the entire team is working with the same shared vision and every aspect of the user experience reinforces Ovum’s mission.

Ovum App. Image: Supplied

---

Sooze Modular Eye Care Device For Keratoconus Patients: Interview with Maoxin Yuan 

Maoxin Yuan is an emerging Australian Industrial Designer working at the intersection of healthcare, technology and lived experience, drawing directly from his own challenges living with Keratoconus – a progressive eye condition that fundamentally changes how you see and move through the world.

Keratoconus causes the cornea to thin and distort, leading to impaired vision, light sensitivity and visual distortion. For many, daily life revolves around rigid contact lenses, ongoing discomfort and the loss of visual independence once those lenses come off. While treatments can slow progression, there is often no simple or comfortable solution.

Sooze emerged to solve this. The modular eye care system combines virtual retinal projection, neurostimulation and light therapy to support comfort, independence and dignity throughout the day and night. This human-centred approach to future healthcare earned Maoxin the 2025 Australian Good Design Best in Class Award in the Next Gen category.

Meet the Sooze Modular Eye Care Device. Image: Supplied

GDA: What first drew you to designing for healthcare and why did you choose Keratoconus as a focus?

Maoxin: Everybody had to pick a topic for our capstone project. I took quite a bit of time and it was challenging thinking about what I wanted to do and the impact I wanted coming out of the project. 

I have this condition, Keratoconus, myself. I wanted to do something about it. It’s a rather rare condition that not a lot of people know about. It was a way for me to understand what other people with this condition are experiencing, across different stages of the disease and how it affects their life.

GDA: How did patient research shape both the problem definition and the design direction?

Maoxin: Me being a patient myself was a starting point, but actually talking to people was important. Being a patient is an enabler during those conversations because people can open up more. I talked to patients and also practitioners, optometrists and doctors. You hear stories about how the condition affects daily life. People hit corners of the bed when they get up, wear their shirts inside out because of their impaired vision without their rigid contact lenses.

One patient I interviewed wanted to become a pilot, and because of this she couldn’t. Later she did a surgery and came back and gained her commercial pilot license. That stuck with me. It changed people’s life trajectory, not just everyday life.

I also understood what hacks or products they use to deal with the challenges. A lot of people suffer from dry eyes and constantly use eye drops. They have to stop what they’re doing because their eyes are dry. They couldn’t sleep very well because of eye pain at night. Once they take off their rigid contact lenses, they don’t have a consistent, reliable, comfortable way to do activities they love, like reading or watching TV before bed. That became the focus area. Bringing vision support after their rigid contact lens session, plus eye care for dry eye and eye pain.

GDA: How did you balance clinical function with comfort and wearability?

Maoxin: I wanted the least invasive product that supports them without them really needing to take care of it, or having to remind themselves to use it. It needed to blend into their lifestyle better. You’re still asking a lot from the patient to wear something in the house and during sleep. That’s a lot of hours and commitment.

Form and design language mattered. I wanted something softer, more inviting, so people could easily accept it. Function is one thing. If this looks horrible, or if it looks uncomfortable, people are not going to wear it. Balancing function and visual aesthetics was really important.

GDA: Why was a modular system the right solution for supporting patients across day and night?

Maoxin: Patients wear their rigid contact lenses during the day. Once they get off work and their usual routine, they’re tired and their eyes are dry because of keratoconus or because of the lens. They take off their lens and before this solution, they wouldn’t have any reliable way to see.

Now they put on Sooze with the visor and the headband. They go about their activities, watching TV and reading books. When they’re about to sleep, they take off the module and put it into the case. They still wear the headband and turn on the red light therapy and sleep. The next day they take off the headband, put it on the charging dock, and start wearing their rigid contact lenses. If they need vision support in the morning, they can pop the visor back in, get ready, then take it off and put it back into the case.

Modularity helps get rid of non-necessary functions when there isn’t a need for it. Vision support is not needed when you’re sleeping, and it’s better not to wear more things during sleep. It also allows flexibility and future-proofing. You could do another module, like an eye mask to block out light for better sleep.

GDA: How do Virtual Retinal Projection, neurostimulation and light therapy work together to restore independence?

Maoxin: Virtual retinal projection is aiming at vision support. Neurostimulation is aiming at dry eye and eye discomfort.

Virtual retina display is like shooting a safe level laser into your eyes. Because it’s condensed, it can deliver the image without being too distorted by your cornea, bypassing imperfections and delivering a sharper image. You could wear this and see the world captured by the camera but delivered more clearly into your eyes.

Neurostimulation has research around pain relief. There’s also research about neurostimulation stimulating the nerves around your forehead areas or upper eye areas for tear stimulation, so you have more tears coming out and that helps with dry eye issues.

Light therapy is part of the system. The light engine that does the virtual retina display is only needed when you’re awake. Once you’re ready to sleep, you take off the vision support module, the visor and the camera module. Then the light engine is available for other purposes. Because they have sleep issues, the light engine can be used for red light therapy during sleep to help with sleep quality. It’s an add on function after they take off the visor.

The Sooze device being used during sleep. Image: Supplied

GDA: As a young person, what edge or insight do you have that sets you apart from more experienced designers?

Maoxin: Because you’re new to the industry, you have a lot of ideas. People can have a certain understanding of the industry that wouldn’t have wild ideas you could bring to the table. Being the youngest team member also means you’re exposed to new technology and new trends, and directions and angles that people might not have thought about. Experience builds up, but the level of curiosity and your new way of thinking can contribute to the project.

GDA: What did winning the 2025 Australian Good Design Best in Class Award mean to you?

Maoxin: It’s huge. I was really grateful and really excited. You dream of winning something like this. It’s a nod to my hard work. It’s also an inspiration and encouragement for me to do more.

GDA: What responsibility do designers have when shaping future healthcare tools?

Maoxin: Designers are ultimately the advocates for humans. That is one of the most important things in designing for future healthcare, or for the future in general. Always thinking back to the user. Always thinking about what we could do better to help a certain group of people have a better quality of life.

Maoxin Yuan. Image: Supplied

---

Designing with, not for.

Through the work of Nakatomi and Maoxin Yuan, we see what becomes possible when design is led by care, lived experience and deep respect for the people it serves.

Good Design Australia acknowledges and celebrates the designers, founders, patients, collaborators and communities whose voices shape projects like Ovum and Sooze. Together, these works set a benchmark for designing better healthcare.