Clinical reality. National scale.

A testing platform has to work where testing actually happens. Clinicians were operating under time pressure, wearing gloves, face shields, and other protective equipment. Authentication patterns that assumed a clear face or precise touch introduced friction into essential tasks.

The product challenge extended beyond one interface. Patients, testing staff, result verifiers, and enterprise administrators needed a coherent system for identity, test authenticity, results, and a secure Health Pass. Privacy, clinical requirements, English and Spanish support, and pandemic delivery constraints shaped every decision.

I owned design delivery for the program end-to-end, from the initial brief through 18 months of national operation. At the start that meant setting the design strategy with Abbott's senior leadership and personally building the MVP prototype CEO Robert B. Ford used to secure concept validation from the White House Administration — the artifact the program's go-decision rested on. From there my decisions defined the program: whom to hire, how to structure a 22-designer organization across six time zones, what the operating model and quality bar would be, and which trade-offs to make when regulatory scrutiny, launch pressure, and user evidence pulled in different directions. I represented design in the weekly program reviews with the White House team, and I was the person accountable when the answers had to be right.

Clinical workflow observation and collaboration with clinicians surfaced the mismatch between protective equipment and assumed interaction patterns. That context informed the authentication and task flows.

Service blueprints developed with CDC clinicians connected the separate products to the testing journey. Pandemic restrictions limited conventional user testing, so internal medical staff and volunteer employees also contributed to evaluation.

The initial prototype helped align the program and brief delivery partners. Service blueprints and product flows then evolved through clinician input, design reviews, and cross-functional delivery.

The program combined a core team focused on research, strategy, and architecture with production support for interface design and the design system. This made rapid delivery compatible with shared standards and clear ownership.

NAVICA connected five products in a single service. My contribution spanned the early product concept, design direction, clinical workflow response and delivery leadership, within my wider responsibility for Abbott’s distributed design team. Abbott recognized my NAVICA contribution with its President’s Award, presented by CEO Robert B. Ford.

As Design Delivery Lead I worked directly with the CDC and U.S. health authorities on how verified results moved through the system — and the platform followed: NAVICA became the companion for United Airlines’ CDC-approved international travel testing program (Forbes), powered verified screening for NCAA collegiate athletics and high-profile events during the pandemic, and fed results into public-health reporting through APHL and state health departments. I am named as co-inventor on six U.S. design patents on the NAVICA Health Pass interface: D958,819, D959,468, D959,469, D961,607, D976,949 and D977,510, assigned to Abbott Laboratories. The $760 million figure belongs to a separate public procurement context, not a NAVICA revenue or UX outcome: HHS awarded Abbott a $760 million contract for 150 million BinaxNOW rapid antigen tests. My contribution was to NAVICA, the companion digital service for accessing and sharing test results—not to the federal purchase itself.