BeterDichtbij
2023-2025
Designing healthcare communication apps
BeterDichtbij is a healthcare communication platform used by hospitals and clinics across the Netherlands. It allows patients and healthcare professionals to communicate through messaging, video calls and shared media. I worked on the UX and UI across multiple parts of the ecosystem, including the patient app and the professional apps used by doctors. The focus was on clarity, accessibility and communication flows that work for a broad audience, including users with limited digital skills.
UI Design
Information Architecture
Usability Testing
Wireframing
Mobile App
UX Design
Prototyping
Project details
A large part of the work focused on structuring healthcare communication in a way that supports fast, practical use. Conversations are often short, context-sensitive and time-critical, so the interface needs to make it easy to quickly find the right conversation, understand its status and respond without friction. I worked on features such as search, drafts, conversation management and media sharing, helping create an experience that feels predictable and easy to navigate for both patients and healthcare professionals.
Because the platform is used in real medical contexts, usability and accessibility were central throughout the process. Together with my colleague Mans, I also participated in usability testing with doctors in a hospital environment. Observing how healthcare professionals actually used the app helped validate design decisions and revealed improvements in navigation, message handling and information hierarchy.
1M+
Users in the Netherlands
25K+
Healthcare professionals
#1
Health app in the Dutch App Store
UX approach
For healthcare professionals we worked on a new mobile app within the platform. My role covered UX and UI across flows, wireframes, screen design, prototyping and handoff. A key challenge was designing messaging workflows that allow healthcare professionals to manage many conversations efficiently, often under time pressure.
The app needed to support more complex behaviour than standard messaging apps. We designed features such as conversation states, advanced filtering, search behaviour, group accounts and linked conversations, helping users quickly find, prioritise and handle the right message.
To validate important decisions we built advanced interactive prototypes in Figma and tested them on site in the hospital. These sessions helped refine interaction patterns, terminology and structure. Alongside the product work, we also built a reusable component library with documented patterns and tokens to support consistency and implementation across the platform.
