Product Design & Data Viz for Public Health
HealthWeather
Helping a health technology company turn real-time illness data into a trusted public health forecast
About The Role
In the chaos of the early pandemic, I moved fluidly between sketching, high-fidelity prototypes, and user testing, always grounding design in real data. I served as a bridge between data scientists, engineers, and product leads, keeping momentum through rapid iteration.
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Kinsa Health builds consumer health technology to track and predict contagious illness.
Kinsa was at a transitional moment, aiming to demonstrate the value of its smart thermometer data beyond consumer use. They wanted to position themselves as a trusted public health partner during the COVID-19 crisis, showing how real-time illness signals could benefit local governments, journalists, and the general public.
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The COVID-19 pandemic created urgency for new ways of visualizing and communicating illness risk.
While people had countless dashboards and news sources to consult, most lacked clarity or accessibility for everyday use. Kinsa hoped to transform their thermometer data into something as familiar and practical as a weather forecast, an everyday tool to inform decisions about safety, gatherings, and public response. What was unclear was how to balance technical credibility with public readability, and how to evolve quickly as the pandemic, and public understanding, shifted
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I translated complex health data into clear, trustworthy, and adaptable visual systems.
As Data Product Designer, I executed all visual designs, working closely with PMs, engineers, and data scientists. I built high-fidelity prototypes grounded in real data, using Tableau, SVGs, and Figma plugins, so team conversations stayed realistic and engineering handoff was seamless.
When early user research showed that detailed citations of data sources actually reduced trust, I reframed the interface to emphasize clarity over exhaustive references, helping users assess their personal level of risk. I also maintained naming conventions and design system components so our work could scale, and used paper sketching alongside digital exploration to uncover visual metaphors that might otherwise have stayed hidden
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HealthWeather proved that public health data could become part of daily life.
The site launched with over two million users in its first nine months, and the CDC integrated HealthWeather visualizations into internal reporting. Beyond metrics, the project reshaped Kinsa’s role from making consumer health products to establishing itself as a public health partner. For me, the lasting takeaway was that simplifying risk communication builds trust more effectively than overwhelming detail. In a fast-moving and ambiguous pandemic environment, I learned to anchor design in high-fidelity, data-driven prototypes while staying flexible enough to adapt to shifting user needs.
