Jenna Hagan,
Human-centred
Visual & Service Designer




Increasing clinical efficacy with a visual design system



Designing Starship Hospital’s clinical pathways for better patient outcomes


In early 2021, Starship Hospital’s Pathways and Outcomes team approached Ara Manawa with an opportunity to improve patient outcomes by standardising care through clinical pathways. To support this, I partnered with the team to design a visual system that would make clinical pathways easier to use and implement across services.
A draft of a clinical pathway to test the design system. (Note: This is not a final pathway output)


My Role

I led the design work on this project, collaborating closely with the Pathways and Outcomes team to create a scalable visual system. My responsibilities included researching best practices, auditing existing pathway formats, and leading the design. I translated insights from user feedback into a modular design kit and comprehensive style guide, ensuring the system could be adopted long-term by Starship’s team.

The Opportunity

Clinical pathways are structured, evidence-based algorithms that help clinicians deliver consistent, high-quality care for specific conditions or procedures. While their clinical content is essential, the way they’re presented is just as important. Our challenge was to create a visual design system that could support ease of use, clarity, and consistency. This ensures pathways are not just clinically sound, but also practical and accessible for frontline teams.

Key Challenges

Through research and initial engagement, several challenges emerged:
  • Lack of consistency: Existing pathways varied widely in format and layout, making them difficult to follow.
  • High cognitive load: Dense content without clear hierarchy slowed decision-making.
  • Limited scalability: Without a standardised design system, pathways were recreated from scratch each time.
  • Workflow alignment: Visual solutions needed to fit seamlessly into existing clinical practices to gain adoption.

Our Approach

I began by researching clinical pathways from other leading institutions to understand how design could support clinical decision-making. This audit helped identify best-practice approaches to layout, hierarchy, and visual communication.

Examples of clinical pathways that were discovered in our research. There was a wide ranging variety, but none that met the criteria for our pathways.


Key activities included:
  • Audit & Benchmarking: Analysed pathways for layout, typography, colour use, and hierarchy.
  • Prototyping: Developed early design concepts and tested them with clinicians.
  • Iterating with Feedback: Refined structure and visual rules based on usability testing.
  • System Design: Created a modular visual design system, including templates, usage rules, and style guidance for consistency.

Key Outcomes

  • Visual consistency: Delivered a reusable design system and template for sustainable, long-term use.
  • Ease of use: Improved clarity and navigation of pathways, reducing cognitive load for clinicians
  • Clinician engagement: Early testing helped ensure the system aligned with real clinical workflows
  • Scalability: The system can be applied across departments to support consistency in care delivery

Our Learnings

Design has a key role to play in improving clinical decision-making. By embedding human-centred design into the early stages of pathway development, we ensured the system was shaped around clinician needs—not just policy or compliance. Working alongside Starship’s Pathways and Outcomes team helped us balance clinical integrity with design clarity.

Conclusion

The visual design system created for Starship’s clinical pathways supports better care through better communication. It has laid a foundation for future pathway development and demonstrates how design can tangibly improve clinical efficacy and patient outcomes.

The final design guide and kit of parts applied to the template for the Starship Pathways and Outcomes team to utilise.


Project Lead:
Jenna Hagan

Sponsor:
Sarah Wilson, Director of Starship Pathways and Outcomes Team

Contributer:
Amelia Tunnicliffe, Starship Pathways and Outcomes Team