80% Return in 7 Days: How a Lean MVP Brought Patients Back to Their Nutrition Plan
My role: Product Designer, responsible for the entire digital journey.
Team: Just me and Maria Emília, the clinical nutritionist, with a part-time dev if needed.
Duration: 2 intense months.
Deliverables: Full WebApp screen flows, a working prototype in Framer, interview reports, and qualitative research.
When I joined, “Maria Emília Nutrição” existed only offline: clinic visits, spreadsheets, scattered papers.
Patients with dietary conditions would arrive excited and leave frustrated: they’d lose written instructions, forget appointments, and return with the same complaints.
The red flag came when we saw that only 20% of patients returned for a second appointment.
Maria Emília admitted: “It’s heartbreaking to see someone excited about the plan and then disappear.”
My hypothesis was they needed an integrated way to keep patients engaged. They were skipping sessions and abandoning their plans even though they needed it.
So we made a decision: every interaction had to remind them they were being cared for.
I started by mapping the entire journey: scheduling, consultation, plan delivery, follow-up.
Because of time. I did quick interviews with three real patients, uncovering emotional triggers: fear of failure, shame in reporting slip-ups, and the need for ongoing encouragement.
Based on that, we created an MVP that sent reminders and gave patients access to their consultation history. All wrapped in a functional prototype we validated in just two weeks.
I designed a high-fidelity prototype featuring Maria’s brand (which I also redesigned to align better with her business).
In closed testing, and 10 people, 8 of patients said they felt “more supported” and booked a second appointment within 7 days (up from just 20%).
Patients praised the “human feel” of the WebApp interface: messages that reminded them of appointments and offered short nutrition tips helped them feel safe.
Maria gained clear insight into the critical drop-off points: plan abandonment and recurring questions.
She used our reports to adjust prescriptions in real time, keeping patients updated through Whatsapp.
Though the project paused afterward, the prototype served as a blueprint for future continuous care and digital follow-up solutions.
For Maria Emília, the WebApp outlined a clear path to scale her practice without losing the personal touch.
It showed that digital doesn’t erase the offline but it can make for a better overall experience. With real engagement data and faster plan adjustments, her workflow improved.
If I had another shot, I’d start with a simple onboarding panel for patients, focused on behavioral reinforcement and data collection for the nutritionist, before building out complex features.
The key lesson: start small, gather fast feedback, and then expand. Understanding the service provider’s reality and adapting to it made all the difference.
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