A Shared Space for Counsellors and Patients

Now let me show you the highlights of the mobile app for patients:

Homepage

Interviews showed patients mainly want to:

• Book sessions.
• Access reliable info related to cancer.
• Find out local and regional support services.
• Access quick guided exercises and meditation.

So the homepage is built exactly around those four tiles, plus a clear next-appointment card.

Appointments

This flow replaces blind phone booking with flexibility: patients can review counsellor info, see whether a session is online or in person, and use three simple actions—start, change, or book again.

Meditation Coach

Patients asked for fast, calming exercises, especially during stress spikes. So this screen uses minimal text, clear rhythm cues, and a single action button to avoid cognitive load.

Tidy Documents Drawer

Patients told us they lose documents across emails and folders, so this screen gives them one clear place to upload, store, and share files with counsellors.

Reliable Cancer Sources

Because patients were exhausted by unreliable cancer information, we added a vetted resource hub; trusted links, videos, and podcasts reviewed by real counselling centres.

Therefore, even with prior research available, I did my own.

Even with Fraunhofer research available, I wanted first-hand insight to avoid blind spots and hear needs in users’ own words. I started with secondary research, reviewing guidelines, health reports and existing cancer apps, and found that:

#1 The Need is Real

About one in three people with cancer has a diagnosable mental disorder, such as anxiety or depression, a strong sign of the need for psycho-oncological support. (Source: Mehnert et al., Journal of Clinical Oncology, 2014)

#2 Family Members Struggle Just as Much as Patients

Research highlights that family members of cancer patients often experience serious psychological strain, sometimes equal to or greater than the patients themselves.

#3 Limited Reach: Too Few Psycho-Oncology Centres for the Country’s Needs

Despite national guidelines promising equal access to psychosocial care, the country still struggles with limited reach: according to the project’s earlier research, there were only about 193 psychosocial counselling centres across Germany’s ~400 districts.

#4 Current Apps Educate Patients, But Don’t Connect Them to Real Counsellors

Strong symptom/education apps existed (e.g., MIKA; PINK! Coach as a DiGA), but none linked people to real counselling centres with scheduling, documents, or follow-ups.

#5 The Solution Fits the Moment

With most people already using smartphones, bringing support into one simple digital place became the easiest way to help patients find, book, and manage care.

Interviews revealed a clear mismatch between patient and counsellor priorities.

I spent weeks on the floor (virtually), running remote interviews and conversations with patients (n=6) and counsellors (n=5) to understand their day-to-day reality. As a result, a clear split in expectations surfaced:

Using interview insights, I built personas and journeys that kept the team close to patients and counsellors.

Patient Persona:

Counsellor Persona:

Patient Journey Map:

Counsellor Journey Map

We used co-design sprints to unpack and address each patient–counsellor conflict.

In these co-design sprints within the team, we turned a messy wish list into concrete requirements, working through each patient–counsellor conflict and either finding a middle ground or clearly prioritising one side.

Afterwards, I mapped the entire product to bring clarity to the scope.

I started with lo-fi wireframes for desktop and mobile, then tested and refined them over several rounds.

I then adapted Material 3 into a cohesive, accessible design system.

And below are the highlights of the desktop app for counsellors:

Homepage

Counsellors asked for “one place to see everything.” The homepage delivers that: live schedule, incoming requests, updates and documents in one view, so counsellors don’t have to switch between tools.

Appointment Management

User research revealed counsellors needed one trustworthy system for sessions; something their current mix of Outlook and Meona couldn’t provide. This unified calendar gives them one place to view, start, reschedule, or organise appointments without jumping between tools.

Patient Documents Overview

Counsellor interviews showed documents were scattered across email, folders and paper. This table collects all files per patient, ordered by session, so counsellors can see, open and upload documents without leaving the profile.

Patient Overview

Interviews showed counsellors already manage their day in Excel-style tables and struggle when patient data is spread across tools. This list keeps all patients and contacts in one sortable view so they can search, open a profile, add appointments or safely remove outdated records in a few clicks.

Mobile App:

• First iteration with 7 patients: the problems they hit and the fixes I designed:

Too many steps for registration → Users got tired before even reaching the app.

What I did: Simplified the registration flow by removing non-essential input fields, after consulting with our counsellor colleagues. Result: in the second round of testing, registration no longer came up as a problem.

Lack of navigation clarity → Users weren’t sure what to do next after signing up.

What I did: Added clearer labels and introduced a short intro video explaining how to use the app; shown right after registration and always accessible via Settings.

Distress thermometer confusion (a 0–10 scale where patients rated how stressed they felt) → Several users didn’t understand what it measured or how to respond.

What I did: Removed it entirely for the MVP, as counsellors also confirmed it wasn’t a critical feature for the first version.

Confusing tab design → Users often missed key sections or tapped the wrong icons.

What I did: Redesigned the tabs for better visibility and consistency, using more familiar visual cues and active-state feedback.

• Second iteration with 8 patients revealed just one remaining problem:

Fully booked counsellor frustration → Patients had to backtrack and restart their booking whenever a counsellor’s calendar was full.

What I did: Added an “Earliest Available Slot” indicator directly on the counsellor card so patients could instantly see earliest availability and decide whether to book or move on.

Desktop App:

• In the usability test of the desktop app with 6 counsellors, the only suggestion was an “Outlook-style” booking view.

But in the middle of testing, two other tools were approved and took over our original use case. 🚨

Until then, counsellors had to use Meona for GDPR safe calls and scattered tools for documentation. During our tests, Webex was suddenly approved for video and Freinet was deployed for document management, so the core counsellor problems were now covered. So the challenge shifted from building a replacement to designing around the new setup.

To understand whether the problem was local or systemic, we ran student-led research in other centres.

We were legally limited to Freiburg, where many counsellors were colleagues or friends of our team, so we asked a colleague’s students to interview centres in Karlsruhe, Bern (Switzerland) and beyond. They all told a similar story:

• Counsellors everywhere juggled multiple systems.
• Double documentation was the norm.
• Many wanted AI-assisted tools: voice-to-text, live translation.
• But no one wanted yet another standalone platform.

And now I present to you: the “now what?” focus group:

In the last focus group, we brought patients, relatives and counsellors together to ask a simple question: now that the reality has changed, what should this project become?

🌟 THE OUTCOME 🌟

Keep the patient app that people liked, stop trying to replace Freinet and Webex, and instead integrate with them while adding what they still cannot do, like AI powered live translation, voice to text documentation, and emotion aware voice support for counsellors.

🚀 What comes next (after the funding pause):

This workshop wrapped our funding round and put us in pause mode. With the next funding, we plan to add AI translation and transcription, deeper integration with tools like Freinet, better accessibility and languages, and keep co-creating with real users.