Healthcare4All provides real-time insights into the quantity and quality of public health centers across West Africa. I led the UX efforts to make critical health data easily accessible, focusing on intuitive user flows, user research, and a clean, responsive interface.
I designed a comprehensive web platform that enables policymakers, NGOs, and stakeholders to monitor healthcare infrastructure, track service delivery, and make data-driven decisions.
This dashboard aims to solve the challenge of fragmented health data by offering a simple, user-friendly solution that brings transparency and visibility to public health systems in the West African region.
On an annual basis 1.3 million Nigerians are pushed below the poverty line due to health related issues , Nearly 72% of the health expenditure of Nigerians are paid out of pocket forcing people to choose between their health, housing, education and even food for their children.
I was born and raised in Nigeria and this was a challenge I personally faced. It was difficult to get access to good healthcare. Good healthcare is very expensive and the good hospitals have limited resources.
A real-time healthtech dashboard that considers the diverse needs of policymakers, researchers, economists, NGOs, and public health stakeholders who require accurate and up-to-date information on healthcare infrastructure across West Africa.
The platform provides data on the availability, quality, and capacity of public health centers, helping decision-makers allocate resources effectively, identify gaps, and improve access to affordable healthcare for underserved communities.
I led the end-to-end product design process – from user research and data analysis to wireframing, prototyping, and final UI design.
I worked closely with health professionals, data scientists, and government stakeholders to understand their pain points and translate complex healthcare data into a simple, intuitive dashboard experience. My focus was on creating a seamless user flow that empowers users to make informed decisions quickly and confidently.
In making this project, I went through design thinking approach for systematically identifying the user needs in order to ideate the solution that given lasting value for the customer.
The first step for me was understanding the real problem we’re trying to solve. I grew up in Nigeria and I’ve seen firsthand how difficult it can be to access quality healthcare. But to design something meaningful, I needed more than just personal experience — I had to understand what others were facing too, and why the system continues to fail so many people.
I started by conducting qualitative research — having real conversations with people who rely heavily on public health centers. This helped me go deeper into their stories, challenges, and the emotional weight healthcare decisions carry for families. I spoke with health workers, patients, and people in underserved communities across a few West African countries. These conversations revealed how lack of access, poor infrastructure, and high out-of-pocket payments create an impossible choice between treatment and survival.
To back this up with data, I ran a quantitative survey to gather broader insights. I needed to understand how widespread these problems were, what services people use, how often they visit public health centers, and what their expectations were. The responses confirmed just how broken the system is — and how urgent the need for clarity, visibility, and resource planning really is.
From these findings, a few key themes stood out:
People don’t know which public health centers are functioning well or even open.
Quality of service varies dramatically from one location to another.
Policymakers and NGOs often make decisions without up-to-date data.
Healthcare workers feel overwhelmed but unseen in the system.
These insights shaped how I approached the rest of the project — building something not just functional, but truly grounded in the reality of the people it’s meant to serve.
A large part of this project was dedicated to continuous user interviews. I kept going back to the people using (or trying to use) public healthcare services — listening, asking new questions, and adjusting based on what I was learning. I also spent time researching existing platforms and tools to understand how healthcare data is currently tracked, where the gaps are, and what’s already been tried.
To get clarity, I broke the challenge into a few core questions I needed to explore:
What information do users (especially policymakers and NGOs) need about public health centers to make effective decisions?
How do people currently access data on public health infrastructure, if at all?
What are the biggest blockers to accessing timely, reliable health services?
How do frontline workers and patients perceive the quality of public health centers?
What role does real-time data play in improving outcomes?
I spoke with public health officials, hospital admins, data analysts, and patients from Nigeria, Ghana, and Senegal. I organized the key ideas from these conversations into an affinity map so I could clearly see recurring themes and unmet needs.
Most of the current tools out there were either internal systems used by government agencies or outdated dashboards that lacked real-time updates. Many NGOs mentioned they rely on word-of-mouth, field visits, or static PDFs to assess health center performance — which means planning is often slow and based on incomplete data.
A few platforms tried to map facilities, but they weren’t user-friendly and didn’t offer context on quality, staffing, or availability of essential services. For frontline workers, there was little to no visibility into what was happening beyond their own centers. This made it harder to coordinate resources or flag urgent needs.
Target Users
n = 8
Age: 25–65 years old
Mix of public health staff, policy analysts, NGO workers, and everyday users of government health centers
Comfortable with basic tech (smartphones, web platforms)
Interview Focus
What’s your experience like when trying to access or assess healthcare in your community?
What kind of health data do you currently rely on, and where do you find it?
What frustrates you most about navigating the public health system?
Have you used any dashboards or health monitoring tools before?
How do you currently decide where to send people for treatment or deploy resources?
This part of the project helped me anchor my design direction in real pain points — not assumptions. It also highlighted how valuable a single, trustworthy platform could be for bringing visibility and structure to public health in West Africa.
Once the key takeaways from interviews and survey data were clear, I moved into identifying actionable insights that would directly shape the product direction. The goal was to start addressing the core challenges users faced and begin crafting a tool that could meet those real-world needs.
I started sketching out early concepts based on the major pain points — lack of real-time data, inconsistent reporting from facilities, and poor visibility into quality of care. To keep ideas focused and grounded in user needs, I used HMW (How Might We) statements to guide my thinking and prioritize features:
How might we help NGOs and policymakers track the quality and availability of health centers in real time?
How might we surface actionable health data in a way that’s simple and accessible for both technical and non-technical users?
How might we support frontline health workers in flagging resource gaps and service disruptions?
How might we make it easier to compare the performance of health centers across regions?
These statements helped frame each design decision through the lens of actual user problems, not just technical possibilities. They also served as checkpoints during ideation to make sure every feature we considered had a clear connection to user value.
After conducting early user walkthroughs using low-fidelity sketches and testing with 6 participants from both NGO and health administration backgrounds, a few usability challenges came up that needed to be addressed before moving forward with wireframing.
Key feedback included:
Users wanted clearer indicators for facility performance — color-coded ratings and quick stats were more intuitive than long tables.
Several users found it difficult to locate region-specific data without a search or filter function.
There was a strong need for a “comparison view” to assess multiple health centers side-by-side.
These insights were incorporated into the wireframes, with a focus on simplifying the data layout, improving navigation, and emphasizing visual clarity.
With the product taking shape, it was time to turn to its brand and style. In order to get a consistent visual message which resonates with and informs the user, I created a style guide which was influenced by the brand guidelines
With the structure and style set through the work done with the usability design and visual design steps, I could start working on the high-fidelity designs. Using a UI kit and the style guide in conjunction with the wireframes from earlier stages, I worked out issues for it to be both usable, fit within the style guide, and comply with WCAG 2.2 and ARIA accessibility standards.
Prototyping
After designing a few high fidelity pages, I ran them through an accessibility audit to check for color and contrast and screen reader readability, this passed the WACG 2.0 guidelines.
Accessibility Audit
After designing a few high fidelity pages, I ran them through an accessibility audit to check for color and contrast and screen reader readability, this passed the WACG 2.2 guidelines.
Next Steps
I’d like to further explore several concepts introduced during the wireframing phase, especially features around data transparency and collaboration across health sectors. One idea I’m excited to refine is integrating health worker feedback directly into the dashboard, so that frontline reports can feed into performance metrics in real time.
Another area to expand is personalization. I want to explore how different user types from policymakers to field officers, can customize their dashboard view based on specific goals, such as resource planning, funding decisions, or facility benchmarking.
I’d also focus more on the onboarding experience. Many users, especially those less tech-savvy, need a simple, guided path to understand the value of the dashboard and how to start using it effectively whether they’re viewing facility performance, exporting data, or comparing regions.
Learnings
Working on this project reminded me how important it is to stay grounded in real-world problems. As someone who’s personally experienced the struggles of accessing good healthcare in Nigeria, it was easy to empathize, but it was the research and interviews that kept my perspective broad and focused on users beyond just myself.
This project really pushed me to apply a design thinking approach, identifying the true problem space, validating assumptions, and then shaping solutions that were both human-centered and data-informed. Tools like HMW statements, affinity mapping, and continuous interviews helped me stay focused and adaptable throughout the process.
It also highlighted how powerful simple design can be in complex systems. Designing for healthcare means thinking about usability, accessibility, and impact, not just aesthetics. Future iterations would include features like real-time alerts for resource shortages, dashboards tailored for local government, and integrations with health reporting tools already in use on the ground.
This was more than a design challenge, it was about building something that could genuinely move the needle in people’s lives.
Link to the WorldBank Hackathon
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