Designing COVID-19 testing solutions at scale
How we served millions of Americans during the pandemic by putting users at the center of design to transform critical health infrastructure.
When COVID-19 hit, Color rapidly pivoted from genetic testing to become a critical piece of America's testing infrastructure.
We initially partnered with Bay Area public health departments to serve diverse communities of essential workers who needed accessible, reliable testing. The challenge was immense: our users were primarily mobile-first, often had limited data bandwidth, spoke different languages, and needed an experience simple enough to use during a health crisis.
My role was leading the UX transformation of our entire genetic testing platform to meet these urgent public health needs.
Core work: public health diagnostics foundation
The foundation of our COVID-19 response centered on truly understanding our users—essential workers from diverse communities across the Bay Area. Through user research, I discovered that most people would register and receive results on their phones, often with limited data.
This led me to design mobile-first experiences with localized content that respected different cultural contexts and language needs, as well as site accessibility considerations. The registration and results flow had to be simple enough for someone to complete while stressed about their health, yet comprehensive enough to ensure proper follow-up care.
This user-centered approach became the model for our diagnostics tools that scaled nationwide and later influenced vaccination programs.
When we expanded beyond public health to support businesses, I encountered an important lesson about the importance of observing users in their actual work environment.
At our United Airlines partnership site at SFO, wait times were unacceptably long. Rather than guessing at solutions, I went onsite to watch clinicians work. I immediately saw the problem: scanning small, round test tube barcodes with large iPads required awkward one-handed positioning that slowed down the entire process.
By bringing this user insight back to my team, we implemented external barcode scanners that dramatically improved throughput and made clinicians' jobs easier.
Field research: United Airlines partnership
Specialized workflows: K-12 school testing
User empathy took on new meaning when we expanded to K-12 schools with pooled testing programs.
I traveled to Cincinnati public schools to observe the testing process firsthand, where I discovered something our adult-focused design hadn't considered: kids drop things. A lot.
While our corporate testing packages worked perfectly for office environments, children were dropping swabs during the collection process, leaving schools without enough supplies to test all students.
This direct user observation led us to adjust our supply calculations specifically for school environments, ensuring consistent testing completion rates.
Our university ship-to-home program presented one of the most complex user experience challenges: guiding students through a multi-step process with unforgiving timing constraints.
Students had to swab themselves, find the right type of FedEx dropbox (not all accept biohazards), and complete everything within a specific window before returning to campus. One mistake meant the sample would expire, and their return to campus would be delayed.
Working closely with engineering, I designed content and workflows that broke down this complex logistics challenge into clear, actionable steps that students could successfully follow under pressure.
Complex logistics: University ship-to-home
This work taught me that truly user-centered design means going beyond personas and surveys; it means showing up where your users are, watching them work, and understanding their real constraints.
Whether it was essential workers using phones with limited data, clinicians struggling with awkward hardware, children dropping swabs, or students navigating complex logistics, every design decision started with deep user empathy.
The result was a testing infrastructure that served millions of Americans during our country's greatest public health challenge, proving that when you truly understand your users, you can design solutions that work at any scale.