THE CLIENT

OrtoOptymist is a privately owned orthodontics and orthopedics practice offering comprehensive patient care, including orthodontic treatment, reconstructive procedures, dental hygiene, rehabilitation, and health consultations.

THE CHALLENGE

OrtoOptymist was looking to reposition its brand and expand its customer base by creating a digital experience that would better reflect the quality of its services and appeal to a younger, more digitally engaged audience.

The existing website presented several challenges: information was difficult to navigate, orthodontic and orthopedic services were mixed together, pricing was difficult to find, and the experience relied heavily on dense blocks of text. More importantly, the website was not playing a meaningful role in the clinic's customer acquisition process.

The product challenge was therefore broader than redesigning a website. It was about understanding the needs of multiple user groups, aligning them with business objectives, prioritizing the highest-value problems, and translating those insights into a scalable digital product.

PRODUCT OBJECTIVES

PHASE 1: BRAND & PRODUCT DIRECTION

Establish a clearer brand identity and define the role the website should play within the broader customer journey.

PHASE 2: DISCOVERY & RESEARCH

Understand customer, employee, and business needs through qualitative research, competitive analysis, and usability assessment.

PHASE 3: PRODUCT DESIGN & VALIDATION

Translate research insights into an intuitive information architecture, prototype key experiences, test assumptions, and iterate based on findings.

PHASE 4: BUSINESS & GROWTH

Identify opportunities to improve customer acquisition, strengthen the clinic's digital presence, and create a foundation for sustainable growth.

MY ROLE

Product Manager / UX Lead

I owned the product discovery and design process from problem definition through prototype and implementation. My responsibilities included stakeholder management, user research, competitive analysis, product strategy, prioritization, information architecture, UX/UI design, prototyping, usability testing, accessibility, and supporting implementation in Webflow.

PRODUCT DISCOVERY

The first step was understanding the problem before designing the solution.

I conducted interviews with business owners, employees, and representative users to understand:

• Business objectives, constraints, and growth ambitions
• Existing customer acquisition channels
• User goals, behaviors, and expectations
• Employee workflows and operational pain points
• How patients discover and evaluate the clinic
• What information influences appointment decisions
• Where the existing experience created friction
• Which requirements were essential versus negotiable

A key part of discovery was understanding the relationship between the website and the actual business. Although the clinic consistently operated at high capacity, most new patients arrived through word of mouth rather than through the website.

This changed the product problem significantly. The website did not simply need to provide information. It needed to become a stronger representation of the brand and a more effective tool for building trust, communicating expertise, and supporting acquisition.

USERS & STAKEHOLDERS

Research revealed five primary user groups:

1. Business owners
   Needed a distinctive, marketable experience that could support future growth.
2. Employees
   Needed clearer information architecture and functionality that could reduce friction in day-to-day interactions with patients.
3. Teenagers
   Needed a modern, approachable experience that aligned with their expectations and values.
4. Young adults
   Needed to quickly evaluate services, credibility, pricing, and next steps.
5. Parents
   Needed clear information and an efficient path toward arranging appointments for their children.

Understanding these groups allowed the product strategy to balance business, operational, and customer needs rather than optimizing for a single audience.

RESEARCH INSIGHTS

Several important insights emerged from discovery.

01. The website was not part of the current acquisition journey

Most interviewed users had not visited the website before scheduling an appointment. The clinic relied heavily on referrals and word of mouth.

Opportunity: Turn the website into a stronger acquisition and trust-building touchpoint.

02. Information architecture was creating unnecessary friction

Orthodontic and orthopedic information was presented together, making it difficult for users to identify the services relevant to them.

Opportunity: Reorganize content around user intent rather than the internal structure of the business.

03. Key information was difficult to find

Pricing and procedural information were not sufficiently visible or accessible.

Opportunity: Prioritize high-intent information and reduce the amount of effort required to make decisions.

04. The experience did not sufficiently reflect the brand

Competitors presented more mature visual identities and more clearly defined customer journeys.

Opportunity: Create a distinctive product experience that communicates professionalism while feeling more contemporary and approachable.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

I conducted a competitive audit across direct and indirect competitors, evaluating:

• First impression
• Brand positioning
• Information architecture
• Interaction and functionality
• Visual design
• Content strategy
• Conversion paths

KEY FINDINGS

Competitors consistently demonstrated:

• Stronger and more recognizable brand identities
• Clearer information architecture
• More focused user journeys
• More contemporary visual systems
• Better integration between brand, content, and conversion

These findings helped establish both the experience baseline and opportunities for differentiation.

PROBLEM DEFINITION & PRIORITIZATION

Rather than treating every research finding as equally important, I consolidated and prioritized problems based on user impact, business value, and frequency.

KEY PAIN POINTS

1. Users struggled to find pricing and procedure information.
2. Orthodontic and orthopedic content was difficult to distinguish.
3. Excessive text increased cognitive load.
4. The website did not effectively communicate the clinic's expertise.
5. The digital experience was not sufficiently differentiated from competitors.

PRIORITY AREAS

Based on the research, three product priorities emerged:

1. Simplify navigation
Help users quickly understand where they are and where they should go next.

2. Create a purposeful customer journey
Move from an information-heavy website toward an experience that supports discovery, trust, and action.

3. Reposition the digital brand
Create a contemporary visual language that better reflects the clinic and resonates with its intended audience.

PRODUCT STRATEGY

The research showed that users accessed the experience across both desktop and mobile devices. A responsive product strategy was therefore established from the beginning rather than treating mobile as a secondary experience.

I translated the research findings into a new information architecture focused on user intent, separating services and content into clearer journeys.

The goal was to reduce cognitive load while making the most important information immediately accessible.

IDEATION & PROTOTYPING

I used low-fidelity wireframes to explore multiple approaches to navigation, content hierarchy, and key user journeys.

The wireframing phase allowed us to:

• Explore alternative information architectures
• Prioritize high-value content
• Identify unnecessary interactions
• Validate the placement of key functionality
• Align stakeholders before investing in high-fidelity design

The concepts were then translated into high-fidelity prototypes and iterated through stakeholder feedback and usability considerations.

PRODUCT & BUSINESS TRADE-OFFS

An important part of the project was balancing the ideal product experience with real-world business constraints.

The business owners explicitly did not want public online calendar booking. Appointments needed to continue through phone or email.

Rather than forcing a conventional booking model onto the product, I designed the experience around the existing operational model while making the relevant contact pathways clearer and easier to access.

This was an important product decision: the best solution was not necessarily the feature-richest solution, but the one that aligned user needs with operational reality.

IMPLEMENTATION

Given the project scope, timeline, and budget, I evaluated implementation options and selected Webflow as the appropriate platform.

To maximize development efficiency, I leveraged an existing Webflow foundation and substantially adapted it to the product requirements, content architecture, visual identity, and functionality defined during discovery and design.

This approach allowed the team to deliver a polished experience while keeping implementation effort aligned with the available resources.

ACCESSIBILITY & SCALABILITY

Accessibility was considered throughout the product design process, including readability, contrast, responsive behavior, and content hierarchy.

The website was designed with WCAG 2.1 principles in mind and included additional functionality for text enlargement and contrast adjustment.

The responsive system was tested across desktop and mobile breakpoints, including readability at enlarged resolutions up to 200%.

The underlying content structure was also designed to support future expansion without requiring the product architecture to be rebuilt.

OUTCOME

The project transformed the website from an information-heavy digital presence into a more intentional product experience built around user needs and business objectives.

The key outcomes were:

• Clearer information architecture
• More intuitive navigation
• Stronger separation between service categories
• Improved access to high-intent information
• A more distinctive and contemporary brand experience
• Better alignment between user expectations and business goals
• Responsive experience across devices
• Accessibility considerations integrated into the product
• A scalable foundation for future digital growth

Most importantly, the project demonstrated that the core challenge was not simply visual design. By combining user research, product strategy, business constraints, prioritization, UX, and implementation, the website could become a meaningful part of the customer's journey and a stronger business asset.

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