Making clinical trials human for the patients who need them most
Clinical trial recruitment has an engagement problem. Patients who qualify often never find out, and those who do face an enrollment process built for the research system rather than for them. As Product Strategist and Fractional Product Owner at Connect2Trials, I shaped the MVP vision, aligned stakeholders across sponsors, sites, and CROs, and led the platform from definition through validated prototype over 8 months.
My Role
Product Strategist
Fractional Product Owner · 8 months
Client
Connect2Trials
Clinical trial recruitment SaaS platform
Focus
MVP Definition · UX Strategy
Stakeholder alignment · User research
Engagement duration
8 mo
MVP definition through validated high-fidelity prototype
Stakeholder groups
3
Patients, Sites and CROs, Sponsors: all considered in design
MVP flows delivered
3
Onboarding, Engagement, Community: validated and prototype-ready
00 · Context and Background
Product Strategist and Fractional PO, shaping a 0-to-1 clinical trial platform
Connect2Trials was pre-revenue, pre-code, and pre-product. Three founders with a hypothesis that better design could fix clinical trial recruitment. My job was to figure out if they were right, and if so, what to build first. I came in as Product Strategist and Fractional PO, which in practice meant being the only person on the team whose full-time job was asking whether the assumptions behind the product were actually true.
My scope
I owned MVP strategy through validated prototype. That meant defining the product vision, running usability research, aligning external clinical stakeholders, translating strategy into user stories and technical requirements, managing design execution, and running sprint planning.
The north star: build a platform patients trust enough to join a clinical trial through.
The domain context
Clinical trial recruitment has a well-documented engagement problem. Patients who qualify for trials often don't know they exist. Those who find one face an enrollment process designed for the research system, with complex language, opaque eligibility criteria, and no ongoing support.
Connect2Trials was built on the premise that better design can improve recruitment, engagement, and retention at the same time. My job was to prove that out through an MVP and get it in front of real users.
01 · Problem and Competitive Landscape
Clinical trial recruitment is built for the research system, not for patients
Before defining the product, I conducted a competitive analysis of existing clinical trial platforms across patient discovery, enrollment support, engagement mechanics, and multi-stakeholder workflow integration. The landscape was dominated by registry databases and sponsor-facing tools. Nothing addressed the full patient journey from discovery through retention. The patient experience was an afterthought in every product we reviewed.
I presented this analysis to Connect2Trials' leadership with a recommendation to build the patient trust layer as the primary MVP investment, rather than starting with sponsor or site tooling. Clinical trial platforms that earn patient trust earn everything else. I also identified three distinct stakeholder groups with different needs that any solution had to serve without compromising any of them.
Patients couldn't find or understand trials relevant to them
Discovery was opaque. Medical language and eligibility criteria created barriers that patients couldn't navigate without clinical support. Competitive analysis confirmed no existing platform had addressed plain-language trial discovery at scale.
Engagement dropped off once patients entered the funnel
Without trust-building mechanisms or ongoing support, patients disengaged before completing qualification or enrollment. Usability research with patients confirmed that anxiety and confusion, not lack of interest, were driving drop-off.
No platform served all three stakeholder groups in one product
Sponsors, Sites, and CROs each had distinct workflows. Existing tools served one group at the expense of the others. A platform that required separate systems for each stakeholder wasn't going to scale.
Patients
End users navigating clinical trial participation. Primary design priority. Trust, health literacy, and confidence in the process were prerequisites for adoption.
Sites and CROs
Clinical teams managing recruitment and trial execution. Needed tools that fit existing workflows without adding administrative burden or requiring new systems training.
Sponsors
Pharmaceutical and research sponsors funding and overseeing trials. Needed visibility into recruitment performance, site activity, and enrollment outcomes in one place.
02 · Research and Agile Delivery
Four sprint-based phases from MVP definition to validated prototype
I organized the work into four phases, each running across two-week sprints with specific research and delivery objectives. Patient experience was the primary design priority throughout, but the platform had to serve all three stakeholder groups without compromising any of them. Research findings from each phase fed directly into the next sprint's backlog.
Phase 1
MVP Strategy and Roadmap
Define MVP vision, structure delivery, align internal and external stakeholders on priorities
What I did
Defined the MVP vision and structured delivery into three sprint-based phases with clear go/no-go criteria at each stage
Prioritized core user flows based on business impact, clinical user needs, and competitive gaps identified in the landscape analysis
Facilitated alignment across internal teams and external clinical stakeholders including site coordinators and sponsor representatives
Translated high-level strategy into user stories, acceptance criteria, and technical requirements ready for the design sprint
MVP flows prioritized
Patient Onboarding: simplified registration and pre-screening to reduce friction and improve conversion from discovery to enrollment
Engagement: health literacy tools and process transparency to build patient confidence during the matching phase
Community: peer connection and milestone structures to support long-term retention after enrollment
User stories and requirements framework, mapping patient, site, and sponsor needs across the MVP
The call that changed the product direction
The situation
The founding team had built their MVP assumptions around a platform that would work across multiple sponsors, multiple trial types, and multiple sites simultaneously from day one. The pitch was broad by design: more addressable market, more investor appeal. But as I ran UX interviews with clinical research coordinators and site staff, a different picture emerged. Coordinators described their recruitment workflows in detail: the specific IRB constraints, the patient communication protocols, the site-by-site variation in how trials were actually run. The operational complexity of what the founders were describing wasn't a product problem. It was a go-to-market problem. A platform trying to serve every sponsor and every site at once, without an established trust relationship with any of them, wasn't going to get clinical coordinators to change how they worked.
My recommendation
Don't try to build for everyone. Find one sponsor with one specific trial, sign them as a design partner, and run a focused pilot. Let the operational reality of that single engagement shape the product rather than building against assumptions and discovering the gaps after engineering investment. I brought this recommendation to the founders with the interview findings as support: specific quotes from coordinators about what would and wouldn't change their workflows.
What happened
The founders shifted the near-term strategy. The MVP prototype was scoped tightly around a single patient journey rather than the full multi-stakeholder platform, and the pitch to seed investors was reframed around a pilot-first model. The prototype we delivered became the tool they used in those conversations: not a vision of the full platform, but a demonstration of what a well-designed patient experience could look like for one specific trial.
What this demonstrated
Research that challenges the product direction is more valuable than research that confirms it. The clinical staff interviews weren't on the original project plan. I pushed for them because the founding team's assumptions were built around the sponsor and CRO side of the equation, not the people who would actually have to use the product day to day.
Phase 2
UX Framework and Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
Define information architecture and interaction models for all three stakeholder groups
What I did
Led co-design sessions with patients and internal stakeholders to surface pain points that stakeholder interviews alone had missed
Developed experience maps, interaction frameworks, and user personas grounded in qualitative research findings
The interviews kept surfacing the same thing: patients weren't dropping off because they weren't interested. They were dropping off because the language made them feel like the trial was designed for researchers, not for them. That shaped every content and IA decision in Phase 2.
Presented mid-fidelity wireframes to clinical stakeholders with recommendations for revision before moving to high-fidelity
Design principles applied
Health literacy: every piece of content written for a Grade 8 reading level, validated with real patients in usability sessions
Trust signals: transparency about trial process, timeline, and patient rights surfaced throughout, not just at consent
Progressive disclosure: complex information revealed only when the patient had indicated readiness, reducing cognitive load at critical decision points
Product development framework, four phases from MVP definition through validated prototype
Mid-fidelity wireframes, patient onboarding and trial matching flows
Phase 3
High-Fidelity Wireframes and Prototypes
Produce review-ready prototypes covering all screens and states for key patient tasks
What I did
Led production of high-fidelity prototypes for stakeholder review and requirements validation before any engineering investment was made
Detailed all unique screens and states for key tasks within the application, including edge cases identified in Phase 2 usability sessions
Managed design execution and sprint planning alongside a product designer, keeping delivery on schedule across both tracks
Trial matching: search, filter, comparison, and apply
Community: peer connection, milestone celebration, support resources
Sponsor and site dashboards: recruitment tracking and site performance
High-fidelity prototype, patient matching and community engagement flows
Phase 4
Usability Evaluation and Validation
Test with real users, refine based on structured feedback, validate against MVP goals
What I did
Planned and conducted usability evaluations with patients, site coordinators, and sponsor representatives across structured test sessions
Findings came back with a recommendation attached, not just a summary. Every revision had a rationale the founders could take into an investor conversation or a future partner meeting.
Presented findings and revision recommendations to Connect2Trials leadership with impact rationale before any design changes were made
Managed final prototype revisions to ensure the product aligned with patient trust requirements and sponsor performance needs
What the testing confirmed
Patient onboarding completion rate improved significantly with the simplified pre-screening flow validated in Phase 2
Health literacy tools increased patient confidence during the matching phase, reducing the anxiety-driven drop-off observed in competitive products
Community features were identified by patients as a key differentiator vs. anything currently available
Sponsor dashboard met performance visibility requirements without additional development scope
03 · Outcomes and Business Impact
What the founders had when the engagement closed
This was a pre-seed engagement. No code was written. The goal was to give the founders something they could put in front of investors: a validated prototype showing that clinical trial recruitment could be redesigned around the patient experience, and a go-to-market recommendation grounded in real research rather than assumption.
The prototype covered three validated patient flows: onboarding, trial matching, and community. It incorporated direct feedback from patients, clinical site coordinators, and sponsor representatives. The recommendation to pursue a pilot-first model with a single design partner came directly from UX interviews with clinical research staff, interviews that weren't in the original project scope but that changed the strategic direction of the product.
What the founders took into seed conversations: a high-fidelity prototype, a research-backed MVP rationale, and a go-to-market framing built around operational reality rather than top-down assumptions.
3
MVP flows validated with real users
Onboarding, Engagement, and Community flows tested with patients, site coordinators, and sponsors. High-fidelity and prototype-ready at handoff.
3
Stakeholder groups aligned
Patients, Sites and CROs, and Sponsors all incorporated in the design architecture. Competing priorities reconciled through research-grounded recommendations to leadership.
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Development risk reduced
Modular design system and phased rollout plan gave the engineering team a validated build path before any production code was written.
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Patient trust and confidence
Health literacy tools and transparency mechanisms directly addressed the core driver of patient drop-off identified in competitive analysis and usability research.
04 · Reflection
What this taught me about building for trust in healthcare
Connect2Trials was a different kind of product problem. The technical requirements were manageable. The hard part was that every design decision had a direct bearing on whether a patient would trust the platform enough to enroll in a medical study. That raises the stakes on every UX call in a way that most digital products don't.
Learning 1
The clinical staff interviews weren't on the original plan. I pushed for them because the founding team was designing around sponsor assumptions, not operational reality. That research changed the product direction. Front-loading the uncomfortable questions is always worth it.
Learning 2
Breaking the MVP into three tight phases meant each one produced real findings before the next sprint began. Nothing was built on assumption. That structure didn't come from a template. It came from not wanting to discover the wrong thing after engineering money was already spent.
Learning 3
Clinical objectives and patient emotion have to be aligned, not balanced. The research system's needs and what patients actually feel during enrollment aren't in tension if you design for patient emotion first. When patients feel confident, they complete the process. That serves the clinical objective.
Learning 4
Aligning business outcomes with user behavior required cutting features early. Several items that looked compelling on the roadmap didn't match patient mental models in testing. Cutting them early, with research backing the recommendation, kept the MVP focused and the timeline intact.
