Branding

Mobile App

Accessibility

Design System

Healthcare

Saathi — Your Medicine Companion

73% of Indian patients struggle to understand prescriptions.

I designed a healthcare experience that turns confusing medical instructions into simple visuals, voice guidance, and actionable reminders.

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Saathi was an AI-first experiment — how much could AI compress a full design process into one week?

Research, IA, and screens were all AI-assisted. My role was directing and deciding, not delegating.

Saathi was an AI-first experiment — how much could AI compress a full design process into one week?

Research, IA, and screens were all AI-assisted. My role was directing and deciding, not delegating.

Role

End to End Product Designer

Timeline

2026 | 1 week

Project

Experiment

Tools

Problem Statement

A prescription shouldn't require a translator.

In India, prescriptions are often handwritten in English and filled with medical abbreviations, making them difficult for many patients to understand.

This creates challenges such as:

Missed doses
Incorrect medication usage
Dependency on family members
Fear of asking healthcare professionals for clarification

I explored existing studies, healthcare reports, and accessibility challenges to understand the broader context before talking to users.

Activities

Literature review
Competitor exploration
Healthcare workflow analysis
Accessibility benchmarking

Patients struggle to fully understand prescriptions

Medication non-adherence rate

20k

Deaths annually linked to medication misuse

Official Indian languages, while most prescriptions remain in English

Defining Problem Statement

In India, a prescription is written in seconds and handed over in silence. For millions of patients elderly, low-literacy, non-English speaking, that piece of paper is unreadable. Missed doses and wrong usage follow. The system wasn't designed to harm. It just never learned to communicate. Saathi asks: what if the prescription could explain itself?

Research

The Stories Behind The Statistics

I sat with 6 elderly patients and 3 pharmacists & doctors across Maharashtra, asking each the same set of questions. I shadowed pharmacy visits and collected real prescriptions, the same confusion surfaced in every conversation.

Sunita Joshi

58 • Homemaker • Nashik

"I need someone to tell me, in Marathi, exactly when and how to take my BP medicines without making me feel ashamed."

Pain Points:

English Rx
Doctor speaks fast
Forgets evening dose

Sunita Joshi

58 • Homemaker • Nashik

"I need someone to tell me, in Marathi, exactly when and how to take my BP medicines without making me feel ashamed."

Pain Points:

English Rx
Doctor speaks fast
Forgets evening dose

Rajesh Kumar

62 • Retired clerk • Mumbai

"I have 4 medicines for diabetes & heart. I want a clear schedule that won't let me skip but I don't want to look like a confused old man."

Pain Points:

Too many similar pills
Side effects scare him
Insurance paperwork

Rajesh Kumar

62 • Retired clerk • Mumbai

"I have 4 medicines for diabetes & heart. I want a clear schedule that won't let me skip but I don't want to look like a confused old man."

Pain Points:

Too many similar pills
Side effects scare him
Insurance paperwork

Priya Kumar

34 • Daughter • Bengaluru

"I live 1,500 km from my parents. I need to know they took their pills today without calling them at 6 AM."

Pain Points:

Worry from distance
Parents under-report misses
Confusing pharmacy receipts

Priya Kumar

34 • Daughter • Bengaluru

"I live 1,500 km from my parents. I need to know they took their pills today without calling them at 6 AM."

Pain Points:

Worry from distance
Parents under-report misses
Confusing pharmacy receipts

Meera Kapoor

41 • Pharmacist • Mumbai

"I want a 60-second tool that explains dosing visually so I can serve more patients without skipping counseling."

Pain Points:

Queue pressure
Repeating same explanations
Liability worries

Meera Kapoor

41 • Pharmacist • Mumbai

"I want a 60-second tool that explains dosing visually so I can serve more patients without skipping counseling."

Pain Points:

Queue pressure
Repeating same explanations
Liability worries

Key Insight

Patients weren't failing healthcare.

Healthcare was failing communication.

Opportunity mapping

Where intervention has the most leverage

I mapped every pain point to an opportunity, then scored each on impact (patient outcome) vs effort (engineering + clinical). The top 9 became my MVP.

Translate handwritten Rx → pictograms

Voice playback per medicine

Visual dosage timeline

Family caregiver loop

Pharmacist-assist video

Side-effect emergency triage

Offline reminders

Refill predictions

Subsidy & Jan Aushadhi nudges

Information architecture

5 top-level destinations. Nothing more

For low-literacy users, every extra menu is a barrier. The IA collapses the entire app into 5 tabs, with the scan button as a persistent center action, the most-used flow is always one tap away.

Competitive landscape

Where Current Solutions Fall Short

Existing apps optimize for urban smartphone-native users. Pictogram support, regional languages, and pharmacist assist are rare or absent.

Design system

Warmth, clarity, dignity.

A system designed for elderly eyes, regional scripts, and ₹6,000 phones. Built in pixels you can see from arm's length, colors that survive sunlight, and pictograms that work in any language.