Envoy
Introducing users to recovery during emotionally vulnerable moments.
Creating a healthcare platform focused on emotionally-aware UX and scalable content systems.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Platform
Mobile
Duration
6 months
Team
Team of 6 devs, and 2 product managers
The Problem
Finding help when you need it is tough
Recovery is a challenging, ongoing process, and existing tools lack engaging, accessible ways for patients to stay connected, organized, and motivated.
Recovery apps fail when users disengage. Connections had the right features—but lacked the usability and engagement needed to support consistent recovery.
My Role
Leading the experience and visuals from end-to-end
I owned the product experience from concept through implementation as the sole designer.
I regularly met with business stakeholders to conceptualize features and solidify a UX strategy by providing user flows, high fidelity design mocks and functional prototypes when needed.
I also worked on marketing material and tools for product for consistent visuals throughout and scalable solutions for additional providers.
Sole designer from end-to-end
Provided working prototypes
Worked on marketing and branding
Developed tools to aid in scalability
The Goal
Ease users in to recovery through educational content
With our joint partner in the venture, Addiction Policy Forum, I wanted to make sure that all the resources we had was clearly accessible. I also wanted it to be easily customizable and provide opportunities for our providers to quickly add branded content.
I broke down our users needs into 3 primarily goals:
1. Prevent cognitive overload
Users need immediate clarity without navigating dense or overwhelming interfaces.
2. Emphasize resource discovery
Critical support content needs to feel accessible, structured, and easy to scan.
3. Create emotional trust
The experience needs to feel calming, supportive for a potentially distressed user.
Design Strategy
Designing for emotional clarity
One of the primary design challenges was balancing emotional sensitivity with functional usability.
The sister app, Connections, leaned heavily on dense informational layouts, but these approaches created friction for our users, as it deterred them from exploring the app.
A shortened user flow of envoy.
Lets lighten the load!
I decided to keep the experience compact and simple without as much fluff as Connections. The interactions and experiences should be quick and snappy with fewer taps to reach a certain goal.
Information Architecture
Organizing recovery while prioritizing discovery
A major focus of the project was restructuring how recovery resources were organized and surfaced throughout the product.
Instead of treating all resources equally, the information architecture prioritized:
immediate support actions
high-frequency user tasks
contextual education
gradual exploration of deeper content
This created a clearer mental model for users while making the platform easier to scale as additional resources and features were introduced.
1
.
Nav Bar
Allow users to quicky navigate between sections to access resources.
2
.
Home Screen Callouts
Users can quickly see information relevant to them at the top.
3
.
Content Cards
Provides plenty of breathing room for users while highlighting interactable and important content.
Homepage, providers page and video testimonials page.
Outcome:
Simplified navigation and organized content in a way that was relevate to the user through priority.
Visual Design
Soft UI and softer illustrations
The visual language intentionally moved away from highly clinical healthcare aesthetics in favor of something more approachable and emotionally grounded.
The interface used:
soft visual hierarchy
rounded component shapes
spacious layouts
supportive illustrations
Onboarding illustrations.
Outcome:
Created a calmer experience while maintaining accessibility and clarity across content-heavy flows.
User Learning
Digestible information through gamification
I designed a lightweight quiz experience to reinforce substance abuse education through approachable, low-pressure knowledge checks that felt supportive rather than clinical.
Quiz screens.
Outcome:
Provided an interactive way a user can dive deeper into recovery through a self guided experience.
User Feedback
Listening to our users
To better understand user engagement, I added feedback flows at the end of educational videos and quizzes that captured how users responded to different types of recovery content.
The experience was designed to feel quick, natural, and minimally disruptive to the learning flow.
This also allowed providers to better understand which educational formats drove engagement and where users disengaged.
1
.
Friendly Imagery
I decided to use soft illustrations to humanize the experience.
2
.
Short and Unintrusive
The feedback was meant to be a quick review from the user and so the experience needed to be short to retain attention.
3
.
Relevant Information
I designed the content to be relevant to our providers by catering content towards how their users respond.
Feedback collection screens.
Outcome:
Collected valuable user feedback for our providers through an unintrusive flow.
Internal Tooling & Automation
Building a tool for scalability and beyond
To support provider customization, Envoy’s homepage used branded action buttons tailored to each organization. Initially, these assets were created manually for sales demos and onboarding flows, creating repetitive design overhead and inconsistent turnaround times.
Home screen button examples.
After identifying the repeated patterns across requests, I proposed and built an internal automation tool that generated branded buttons dynamically using customizable logos, text, and color inputs.
The tool allowed teams to:
generate provider-specific assets instantly
customize branding without design support
maintain visual consistency across implementations
reduce repetitive production work
Try out the tool here!
Envoy home screen button generator.
Outcome:
Established a more scalable and future-proof customization workflow for product, design and development.
Impact
Encourage users to begin their recovery journey
The project established a scalable product foundation focused on clarity, emotional usability, and long-term extensibility.
More importantly, the project demonstrated how thoughtful interaction design and systems thinking can improve usability within emotionally sensitive healthcare experiences.
Provided a lightweight introduction to recovery
Allowed users to quickly access recovery resources
Introduced providers to an intuitive way to collect feedback from their users
Created an automation tool for product
Very easy to use. Wonderful option to connect with families in similar circumstances as well as clinicians with evidence based resources.
— darrellmichelle jaskulski on the Google Play Store
This app has a ton of very helpful resources to help families or friends who have a loved one suffering from addiction. This is so needed, thank you!
— "Drhmbrgrz" on the Apple Store
My Reflections
Designing from end to end
Envoy was my first project that I owned from end to end. I was there from its conception to the day it launched. While the process was difficult as an early part of my career, it has helped shape me into a designer who can put his foot forward and push for a specific vision.
I learned how to:
Interact with stakeholders and push for/implement ideas.
Design with stakeholders in mind and provide relevant value.
Build automation tools for repetitive tasks through front-end code.
While the app did not adopt much usage beyond its initial release, its ideas were brought into the modernization and redesign of Connections. In a sense, Envoy was the testing grounds for the future of Chess Health's design philosophy and language.