Superset
Redesigning Unite Us' referral system from the ground up to support both current and acquired users.
Background
Unite Us is a healthtech company that connects individuals to social care by partnering with governments, businesses, and community organizations. After acquiring competitor NowPow in 2021, the company was left with multiple referral platforms and a fragmented user base. In order to unify its customers under one system, Unite Us launched a multi-year effort to consolidate and redesign its referral system, codenamed Superset.
My role
As one of two designers on Project Superset, I helped design the workflows and user interface. I worked closely with UX researchers and project managers to ensure our solutions met the needs of a diverse user base, and partnered with engineering to deliver a shippable solution, all while navigating tight timelines, technical constraints, and constantly shifting requirements.
Impact
Superset was successfully launched in May 2025 to over 1,000 organizations across the United States, bringing improvements such as improved resource discoverability, 37% reduction in clicks for complex workflows, and deep integration with electronic health records.
Challenges and Solutions
Enhanced search experience
Resource Lists
Challenge: How can we fulfill the needs of our acquired customer base?
NowPow’s platform centered around the creation of resource lists that users could send to clients. To retain these users, we needed to ensure our platform supported their core workflows. UX Research conducted multiple rounds of studies to uncover key needs and pain points in their previous experience.
We addressed this by integrating resource list functionality directly into the referral process. Users could add programs from Search into a cart, then choose to save them as a resource list, send them to a client, or convert them into referrals. When saving a list, they could edit its contents, view previous versions, or seamlessly transition to making referrals when the client was ready.
Revamped referral preparer
Challenge: How do we stop punishing our users for not being perfect?
Creating a referral required users to follow a rigid sequence of steps, with little to no guidance or error prevention. One of the most error-prone areas was Grouped Referrals, where the user creates a group of referrals to send to multiple recipients. Grouping had around eight strict rules, and any violations would result in big scary error messages that would force the user to start over.
To remedy this, we separated the resource selection from the referral preparation. Users could focus first on selecting the best programs for their clients, and when they moved on to the next step, the system would automatically group referrals according to the rules. If the user tried to make an invalid grouping, not only would the system prevent the action, it would also clearly explain the reason. Adding guardrails helped to reduce confusion, dead ends, and resulted in a smoother, more forgiving experience.
Cross-domain integration
Challenge: How can we better incorporate other domains into this referral workflow?
The existing referral process lacked integration with other functionality across the platform, such as payments, authorization, legal, and so on. This meant that the user needed to juggle additional separate workflows when making a client referral, which resulted in a fragmented and inefficient experience.
By collaborating closely with engineers, we redesigned the architecture to allow other domains to seamlessly add layers within the referral flow. This greatly streamlined the user experience and was a great cross-functional collaboration.
Would've dones: Favorites tab
Among the many features we designed, one that did not make the final release was the Favorites tab, a place where users could easily access all of their bookmarked resources. It performed strongly in user testing and received enthusiastic feedback, and we advocated hard for its inclusion. However, with limited resources, it was ultimately shelved in favor of boosting favorited programs’ visibility within search results.
Closing Thoughts
Superset was the first project I worked on and by far the largest. It was a privilege being able to work on such an important project and with so many talented individuals, and the work we did laid a strong foundation for future products. Although my time at Unite Us came to an end just over a week after Superset launched, I’m hopeful that my contributions will ultimately result in more people getting the care they need.