Alongside OS
An independent exploration of customer experiences for Bolt Pharmacy and Fella Health.
An independent concept, not affiliated with Bolt Pharmacy, Fella Health or AIOS.
01Business context
A health service grows when people understand what it offers and when existing customers are willing to recommend it. But the usual growth tactics — aggressive prompts, incentives, sharing nudges — sit badly with healthcare privacy and clinical independence.
The question for Alongside OS: can growth come from clarity and genuine recommendation, inside those limits?
02User problem
Healthcare services ask people to make careful decisions with incomplete understanding. Before anyone signs up, they need to know what the service is, what will happen next and what they're agreeing to.
People who've had a good experience may want to share it — but only if that's easy, personal, and never exposes anything about their care.
03My role
I led product strategy, UX architecture, interaction design and visual direction, and built the working prototype.
04Constraints
- Healthcare privacy. Nothing about someone's health can leak into a social or referral surface.
- Clinical independence. Growth mechanics can't influence, or appear to influence, a clinical decision.
- Regulated communications. Claims, language and calls to action have to stay within what a regulated provider can say.
- Varied customer needs. Different services, different levels of familiarity, different emotional states.
- Sensitive referrals. Inviting someone to a health service is personal — it can't feel like a sales funnel.
05Design approach
The focus was simplifying complex customer journeys and connecting separate features into experiences people can understand — while respecting privacy and healthcare constraints.
Two genuinely distinct customer experiences — Bolt Pharmacy and Fella Health — built on one set of reusable technical foundations. The products shouldn't feel like reskins of each other; the plumbing underneath can be shared.
What the prototype includes:
- Brand-specific journeys for Bolt Pharmacy and Fella Health
- Start Together Pass
- Referral and invitation flows
- Care Preview
- Trust Passport
- The Alongside community, with private peer connections
- Personal journey and reflection experiences
- Educational quiz experiences (Beat Me)
06Key decisions
- 01
Make invitations personal and simple.
A health referral is a favour between people, not a campaign. The invite should read like it came from a friend and take as few steps as possible to send or accept.
- 02
Build the Alongside community around people and conversations.
A community is the people in it. Leading with conversations rather than a grid of unrelated feature cards makes it obvious what the space is for.
- 03
Let invited quiz players start without signing up.
Beat Me is the first thing an invited person sees. Asking for an account before they've experienced anything adds friction exactly where curiosity is highest.
- 04
Keep healthcare decisions separate from social sharing.
Privacy and clinical independence aren't features to balance against growth. Sharing lives in its own space and never sits inside a care decision.
07The product
08What I chose not to build
Most of the work in Alongside OS was subtraction. Each change below is something I took out of an earlier version, or decided never to add — and the trade-off that came with it.
- Why I cut it
- A health decision already asks a lot of someone. Every extra label is one more thing to interpret before they can act, so anything that didn't help the next step came out.
- Why I cut it
- Recommending a health service is a personal favour. It should take seconds and sound like a person, not a campaign.
- What wasn’t working
- A grid of unrelated feature cards made the community read like a menu of tools, not a place to talk to people.
- Why I cut it
- What makes a community worth joining is the people in it. Leading with conversations says that immediately.
- What wasn’t working
- An account form stood between an invited person and the thing they'd been invited to try.
- Why I cut it
- Ask for commitment after someone has a reason to give it. The quiz is the reason.
- What got simpler
- The first thing an invited player sees is the challenge, not a form.
- The trade-off
- Players who never sign up leave no account behind, so there's less to follow up on.
- Why it was tempting
- The moment someone finishes a decision is the classic moment to ask them to share — it's where most growth loops put their prompt.
- Why I cut it
- Privacy and clinical independence aren't things to trade against growth. A care decision should never sit next to a social ask.
- What got simpler
- Care flows contain only care. Nothing inside a decision asks you to invite anyone.
- The trade-off
- The growth loop gives up its most obvious trigger. Invitations have to earn their place elsewhere.
What remained
Constraints that simplification couldn’t remove.
- Healthcare privacy
- Simplifying the referral flow couldn't extend to sharing anything about someone's care. An invite can say a service exists; it can't say why you used it.
09Implementation
Both brands run on one codebase with shared foundations, so each experience can look and read differently without duplicating the logic underneath.
10Status
Both experiences are built as a working prototype: brand-specific journeys for Bolt Pharmacy and Fella Health, the Start Together Pass, referral and invitation flows, Care Preview, Trust Passport, the Alongside community with private peer connections, personal journey and reflection experiences, and the Beat Me educational quiz.
11What I'd test next
If invites read like a personal message rather than a promotion, then more invited people will open and finish the referral journey.
Measure Referral completion, invite sent → invite accepted
If the Care Preview shows fewer, plainer labels, then people can explain what the service does and what happens next.
Measure Comprehension check in moderated sessions
If invited players can start Beat Me without an account, then more of them will finish the quiz and choose to learn more.
Measure Quiz completion and voluntary sign-up after play
If sharing never appears inside a care decision, then conversions will skew towards people who genuinely fit the service.
Measure Qualified conversion, not raw sign-ups