darabi dermatology
OVERVIEW
A research-led redesign for a triple board-certified dermatology practice — turning a credible clinic with a self-competing website into a clear, trustworthy path from "I have a concern" to "I have an appointment."
Discipline
UX Strategy
CRO Audit
Design Systems
tools
Figma
Google Suite
ROLE
UX Strategist & Designer
CONTEXT
Trusted in the exam room. Untrusted on the homepage.
Darabi Dermatology is one of the only practices in Minnesota led by a triple board-certified dermatologist — in dermatology, Mohs skin cancer surgery, and dermatopathology. The clinical experience was already excellent. The site just needed to make a first-time patient feel the same confidence a returning one already does.
At OmniFlow Digital, I led the UX & conversion side of the practice's growth engagement: a full UX/CRO audit, a design system built from scratch, and redesigns of the highest-leverage pages. My job was to make the single most valuable action on it, booking an appointment, impossible to miss.
PROBLEM
A site asking patients to do six things at once
Before any pixels moved, I ran the numbers on attention. At the top of the original site, a patient was met with six competing actions at near-identical visual weight: Book Now, Contact Us, a floating "Message Us" widget, a floating phone icon, Patient Portal, and Bill Pay. Two of those (Portal, Bill Pay) are for existing patients — yet they sat shoulder-to-shoulder with the one action that drives new revenue.
The result is a familiar conversion failure: when everything is primary, nothing is. A first-time visitor with a suspicious mole had to decide how to decide before they could act. Add an inconsistent color system, shifting type hierarchy, and pixelated hero media, and the site quietly undercut the very credibility the practice had earned offline.
I framed the whole engagement around one question: what is the single next step we want a worried patient to take, and is everything on the page serving it?
APPROACH
Findings first, Opinions second
The redesign is downstream of an audit. I evaluated the live site against Jakob Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics and WCAG 2.1 AA, plus a manual CRO walkthrough of the core booking path — tested on both desktop (1440px) and mobile (390px).
Every finding follows a strict Observation → Issue → Solution format: what's happening, why it costs conversions or trust, and the specific, implementable fix. Not "improve UX" — but "designate one primary CTA routing to Klara; tier the rest." This is what let me defend each later design decision by pointing back to a numbered finding rather than personal taste.
Audit Findings That Drove the Redesign
Five issues quietly costing the practice patients
The full audit ran across accessibility, conversion, structure, and trust. These five did the most damage to the booking path — and shaped nearly every decision that followed.
Solution I · Design System
One source of truth, built from the brand's own DNA
The audit told me what to fix; the brand told me what to keep. Rather than import an aesthetic, I built a lightweight web design system out of what already belonged to Darabi — anchored by the turquoise that lives in their logo.
The key call was restraint, not replacement. Turquoise stayed because it's brand equity — but it was demoted from a competing text/button color (where it failed contrast) to a controlled accent. Purple was removed entirely. Type was rebuilt into a clear hierarchy — a three-tier display scale and six heading levels — defined across mobile (0+), tablet (576+), and desktop (1200+). Buttons became a tiered primary / secondary / tertiary set, so the "one primary action" principle from the audit was enforced by the system itself, not by willpower.
System
The typographic scale, specified responsively so hierarchy holds from 390px to 1440px — the cohesion the audit found missing sitewide.
Solution II · Homepage
A single, obvious next step
The homepage redesign resolves Finding 01 directly. There is now one primary CTA — "Schedule an Appointment" — carried in a persistent header and echoed at decision points down the page. Returning-patient utilities (Bill Pay, Patient Portal) move to a quiet top utility bar: present for those who need them, invisible to those who don't.
↕ Scroll to explore the full redesigned homepage
Solution III · The Service Page
When "show the work" becomes "show too much."
The medical service page had to do something delicate: prove the practice can treat a wide range of conditions without overwhelming an already-anxious patient. The "Common Medical Conditions We Treat" section became the hardest design problem in the project — and went through three honest iterations.
Solution I · Design System
One source of truth, built from the brand's own DNA
The audit told me what to fix; the brand told me what to keep. Rather than import an aesthetic, I built a lightweight web design system out of what already belonged to Darabi — anchored by the turquoise that lives in their logo.
The key call was restraint, not replacement. Turquoise stayed because it's brand equity — but it was demoted from a competing text/button color (where it failed contrast) to a controlled accent. Purple was removed entirely. Type was rebuilt into a clear hierarchy — a three-tier display scale and six heading levels — defined across mobile (0+), tablet (576+), and desktop (1200+). Buttons became a tiered primary / secondary / tertiary set, so the "one primary action" principle from the audit was enforced by the system itself, not by willpower.
ITERATION
An earlier iteration — enlarged clinical close-ups. Accurate, but confronting.
ITERATION
The final section — calmer lead imagery, with secondary conditions handled by icons and scannable copy.
It's the same principle as the CTA work, applied to imagery: more isn't clearer. The redesign trades exhaustiveness for the feeling the practice actually wants a patient to leave with — you're in good hands.
Solution II · Homepage
A single, obvious next step
The homepage redesign resolves Finding 01 directly. There is now one primary CTA — "Schedule an Appointment" — carried in a persistent header and echoed at decision points down the page. Returning-patient utilities (Bill Pay, Patient Portal) move to a quiet top utility bar: present for those who need them, invisible to those who don't.
↕ Scroll to explore the full redesigned homepage
Outcome & Targets
Built to move the numbers that matter
The redesign is in dev handoff, so live conversion data isn't in yet. But the work plugs directly into the engagement's defined targets — the service pages I designed are the top-priority, highest-leverage surfaces in a 16-page optimization roadmap. These are the baselines and goals it's built to move:
16
Service pages prioritized for design & publish
82.7K ← 46K
Non-branded impressions target (from baseline)
479 ← 222
Non-branded clicks target (from baseline)
≥80 ← 73
AI sentiment score target (from baseline)
REFLECTIONS
What worked
Audit-first design changes what you argue about
Every review pointed back to a numbered finding, so debates were about evidence, not taste.
Building the system from the brand was faster than from inspiration
Keeping turquoise and cutting purple gave instant cohesion without a rebrand.
"Show the work" has a ceiling
On the service page, reassurance beat completeness — the goal was a feeling, not a catalog.
IF GIVEN MORE TIME…
Real patient testing
The partner-recoil was a sample of one; I'd validate the imagery choice with actual prospective patients.
A/B the CTA copy
"Schedule an Appointment" vs. "Book Online" is worth a real test once traffic is live.
Extend & document the system
…across all 16 service pages for clean dev handoff and future reuse.