Seemin Syed
Design Strategist
Turning ambiguity into strategic Clarity
I’m a design strategist specializing in service design, behavioral design, and competitive strategy. I help organizations move from ‘we’re not sure what’s happening’ to ‘here’s what we should do and why.’
Work
I.
Scaling Multi-Stakeholder Workflows in Healthcare Case Management
Service Design
The Real Problem
A healthcare services organization brought me in to improve freelancer efficiency—they thought individual workers were the bottleneck. Workflow mapping with 13 stakeholders across 5 groups (patients, doctors, technicians, specialists, administrators) revealed the actual issue: systemic complexity. Cases moved through fragmented workflows where stakeholders had overlapping needs but no coordination mechanisms, creating redundant work and coordination failures.
The Strategy
I identified patterns in how different stakeholders intersected across workflows. The strategy was to standardize the common patterns (template-based workflows for similar cases), create protocols for exceptions, and automate administrative overhead—all while keeping services running without disruption. The goal was to reduce cognitive load on coordinators so they could focus on the complex cases that actually needed human judgment.
What I Did
– Mapped case flows through contextual inquiry with all 5 stakeholder groups to identify friction points
– Designed workflow interventions incrementally—pilot tested each change and iterated based on feedback
– Automated billing calculations that were eating 30% of coordinator time
– Created case templates for the 70% of cases that followed predictable patterns
– Built centralized case tracking in Dropbox + Excel (low-tech solution that worked with their existing vendor software and partner organizations)
What Changed
Case throughput efficiency improved 47%, enabling the organization to scale to an additional location in 2026. The project broke my assumption that strategic solutions need to be elegant or comprehensive. The Excel tracker wasn’t showcase-worthy, but it solved the actual problem within their constraints. Strategy is contextual—the “right” solution is the one that works in the specific organizational reality, not the one that looks best in a portfolio.
This project was the second in a line of three engagements with this client between 2022 and 2025 (details on my client-facing site).
II.
Digitizing Customer Trust for Community Subscription Platform
Behavioral Design
The Real Problem
The client came to my team thinking their membership site had usability issues—checkout was clunky and conversion was low. But interviews with legacy members, new members, and non-member community participants revealed something different: people loved the organization in person but didn’t trust the digital experience enough to subscribe. The website didn’t feel like the same brand they knew from events.
The Strategy
We called this the “superpower/scam” problem—strong in-person trust but weak digital trust signals created a consistency mismatch. The strategy was trust transference: digitize what made the in-person experience credible (community social proof, transparent ROI) and layer in digital trust signals from competitive analysis of successful membership platforms.
What We Did
– Interviewed users across three segments to map trust gaps between physical and digital experiences
– Conducted competitive analysis of 8 membership platforms to identify trust-building patterns and standards for ROI clarity
– Synthesized findings into design principles prioritizing community visibility and value transparency
– Created and tested an end-to-end prototype for the homepage to checkout flow; usability testing confirmed trust interventions reduced the identified trust-friction
What Changed
Usability test participants showed measurably higher trust in the revised experience. The client used the design principles to rebuild their entire membership platform (launched December 2025) with trust as the organizing principle. The project taught me that trust isn’t a UX problem you solve with better buttons—it requires systemic consistency across every touchpoint.
This client project was conducted as part of a graduate capstone in a team of five UX professionals. The client later engaged me for a separate commercial project (details on my client-facing site) building on insights from this engagement.
III.
Facilitating a Strategic Pivot for a B2B SaaS Startup
Competitive Positioning
The Real Problem
A Series A startup asked us to develop their B2B marketplace for entry into a specific industry. Analysis of 5 competitors, UX reports, and product roadmap review revealed a harder truth: the marketplace model was a poor fit. The industry had high trust requirements between buyers and sellers (creating disintermediation risk), the market was a saturated hierarchy of marketplace leaders, and competitors were actively hostile to newcomers—one had recently shut down (alleging anti-trust behaviour from market leaders). The client was in danger of building the wrong product for a dangerous market.
The Strategy
Given the source of their funding, the client needed their options modeled in a way their investors could evaluate—the startup was lean and agile, so tools also needed to be reusable across multiple strategic conversations. Our approach therefore relied on optimizing their marketplace while representing the tradeoffs necessary to succeed. Specifically: a soft transition from B2B commerce to B2B CRM. This would reduce disintermediation risk (the product would support relationships, not replace them) and lower competitive threat (they’d exist alongside competitors in the ecosystem, not compete directly). The obvious trade-off: slower, trust-based growth instead of transaction volume.
What I Did
– Evaluated 5 market leaders to map competitive landscape and identify whitespace opportunities
– Analyzed existing product roadmap and customer personas to find pivot-compatible segments
– Refined an interactive Figma prototype demonstrating what the pivoted product would look like, staged rollout plan, and feature rationale
– Created design guidelines that could adapt across industries (knowing further pivots were possible)
What Changed
The client used the prototype in their investor meeting to communicate product feasibility. Investors approved a complete market pivot to an entirely new industry—and the prototype’s design system was iterated on for that next iteration. The project taught me that strategic consulting isn’t about giving answers; it’s about giving clients the information architecture they need to make informed decisions using their own business expertise. The prototype wasn’t the solution—it was the decision-making tool.
This client project was conducted in collaboration with a UX Consultant.