Case study

Supporting lung transplant patients and their carers at every step of their journey.

A laptop showing the lung transplant website: a dark navy landing page with the serif headline 'Transplant is an individual journey' and a winding multicoloured line running across the screen.

Time: 2024 – 2026
Client: National Heart & Lung Centre Dublin
Team: Mater Transformation: Lisa Joyce, Mallory Frye, Siobhan Manning
My role: User Research, Service Innovation, UX/UI Design, videography

Challenge

Current patient education resources are fragmented, clinical, and don’t address the emotional and complex needs of lung transplant patients and families.

Outcome

Patient information suite including a digital information hub, patient-led video series and a printed transplant book as well as improvements to the clinical service delivery.

Service impact

Ireland’s first national website for lung transplant care — lungtransplant.ie, live since July 2026.
Supports 60+ transplant patients and families each year with consistent and trusted information.
Sets a new standard for clear, empathetic patient education in lifelong care pathways.
A scalable model for other complex specialties (e.g. heart transplant) or chronic disease care (e.g. diabetes).

New service system

The outcome merges medically approved content with accessible digital formats, a printed book and a compelling video series that brings empathy and peer connection to the forefront.

All those elements complement the existing service to ensure clarity, trust, and most importantly emotional support along the lifelong care pathway.

A hand holding a phone showing the transplant website, with the headline 'Transplant is an individual journey' and the first stage, Before Transplant, expanding below.

Two hands holding the redesigned transplant booklet open at a spread titled 'Lifelong care', a plain peach left page facing a right page of daily self-checks.

A laptop on a dark background showing the website page 'Life on the active list', with a cream banner and an 'On this page' menu down the left.

Process

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Research

Ethnographic research

Review of existing information materials to identify gaps and complexity
Shadowing of the multidisciplinary transplant team and patients in clinic and on the ward

Two hands resting on a spiral-bound medication chart, its columns headed date, time, medication, dose, weight and temperature.

A patient bay in intensive care: an empty bed frame, ventilator, monitors and infusion stands. A masked staff member stands at the left holding a clear folder.

A doorway with 'Family Room' in gold lettering on the wall, opening onto a small waiting room with purple seating and a window.

A wall covered with photographs of transplant recipients with their families and friends, each marked with a small lung or heart sticker.

A hospital waiting area with a roll-up banner for the Irish Heart and Lung Transplant Association beside rows of grey seats and a leaflet rack.

A small table in a waiting area holding organ donor cards and leaflets, with a teal suggestion box underneath inviting questions from patients.

Looking back, I don’t remember one single comprehensive item that talks me through what would happen to me.

— Lung transplant recipient (2022)

In-depth interviews

17 in-depth interviews with patients, care partners and clinical staff.

Information resources

“In the moment you’re sick and not feeling well, it is hard to read the booklet.”

“How to eat an elephant – just one bite at a time.”

“I wouldn’t look up anything online. I would maybe do it if it is recommended by staff. It needs to be officially recognised.”

Staff communication

“You are not left with any ambiguity, ’cause that’s your enemy.”

“The phone calls on Tuesday mornings give me the feeling of security and that I’m not forgotten.”

“I cursed the physios because they pushed me hard in the early days, but I am grateful for that now.”

Family and care partners

“For me, as her sister, it was important to know a little about the surgery and life after transplant and what to expect.”

“My daughters did google, but I wouldn’t. I was just doing what I was told.”

“My family read the booklet a few times. They did google information as well but you could drive yourself mad.”

Contact with other patients

“My fear is to talk to someone who isn’t doing so well post transplant.”

“I would talk to them [other patients] now, because in the end, we are the only people who really know.”

“I spoke to a friend who had a kidney transplant, which helped me a lot and my wife too.”

Synthesis

Identifying recurring challenges across the transplant journey:

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Co-design

Transplant journey map

Collaborative mapping of patients’ lung transplant experience
Journey map became the foundation for structuring the information suite across formats (print, digital, video).

A person standing at the wall-sized journey map, reaching up to place a sticky note in the post-transplant section.

A co-design workshop with faces blurred and roles labelled: psychologist, dietitian, physician, pharmacist, pre-transplant care, physiotherapist and post-transplant care. Some stand at the journey map, others write sticky notes at the table.

A wall-sized journey map on brown paper, coloured sticky notes arranged in rows beneath the headings Pre Transplant, Transplant Surgery and Post Transplant.

Staff workshops

Facilitated co-design sessions with the transplant team: physicians, pre- and post-transplant nurses, surgeons, pharmacists, physiotherapists, dietitians, psychologists, social workers and palliative care.

Workshops helped identify critical timing for information delivery and aligned patient needs with staff workflows.

A group seated around a table facing a screen reading 'Hands on: patient information resources', with two facilitators standing at the front.

Two people standing at a wall of coloured sticky notes arranged in a grid, between two tall windows.

Workshop participants seated around tables, reading printed materials and writing.

Printed journey templates spread across a dark table, annotated in handwriting, with role labels including co-ordinator and psychologist.

A workshop photographed with faces blurred, labels marking each discipline present: social worker, co-ordinators, surgeon, physician, dieticians, palliative care, psychologist and admin.

Printed journey templates spread across a table, each annotated in handwriting with a role label such as co-ordinator or physiotherapist, recording what information that discipline gives and when.

Design principles

The patient education and support system needs to …

be delivered in bite-sized chunks.
include a physical asset.
provide emotional support and reassurance.
address care partners equally.
include patients’ personal stories.
bridge the gap between hospitals.
ensure a continuous person of contact.

3 / 4

Concepts & Prototyping

Card sorting with patients

Engaging patients in reviewing and sorting content chunks across (at that time) seven transplant stages
Most valuable insights have been their preferred timing for information chunks at each stage

Close-up of printed cards labelled 'Information chunk' — 'Managing worries and anxieties', 'Support through family members', 'Spiritual support' — with pink and yellow sticky notes among them.

Two people standing at a table covered in orange cards, sorting them around a printed circle. A large printed journey template lies in the foreground.

Printed information-chunk cards spread across a dark table with pink and yellow sticky notes among them, one reading ‘family and care partners’, another ‘visiting in hospital’.

A patient standing at a table, pointing to a blue tray holding format cards, with rows of orange content cards laid out across a large printed journey template.

A close-up of the format cards on a blue tray: face-to-face conversation, video call, phone call, booklet, paragraph, module learning, chat bot, interactive map, audio stream, voice assistant.

Paper prototyping

Exploration of the role of a website as a central information resource
Low-fidelity wireframes focus on early narratives and usability patterns

Hand-drawn wireframes in marker on paper: a homepage headed 'Your transplant journey' with quicklinks and a search field, alongside alternative navigation layouts.

Printed booklet mockups titled 'First steps to Transplant', 'The Transplant Surgery' and 'Adjusting to life after Transplant', beside a printed journey diagram, a sketchbook and a laptop.

UX storyboard

This visual narrative helped to communicate the vision to the medical team, highlight key touchpoints for patients and care partners across their journey.

In retrospect, it proved to be a key tool in keeping the wider team engaged throughout the process and excited about the outcome.

Watch the UX storyboard on Vimeo

4 / 4

Implementation

1. Website development

Designed the end-to-end UX and UI in close collaboration with a content designer
All content carefully curated and medically approved by clinical teams, aligned with NALA and HSE guidelines
Partnered with a third-party agency to ensure technical delivery matched our design vision

A Figma canvas showing page designs arranged in groups labelled Level 2 and Level 3.

A Figma canvas showing three page designs side by side: mobile and desktop versions of 'For families and care partners', and 'Financial planning'.

A Figma canvas showing the landing page in both mobile and desktop widths, with the transplant stages listed as expandable sections.

2. Video production

Produced a central video series made up of three strands:

Patient stories — to foster peer connection
Medical explainers — to support treatment understanding and adherence
Care partner voices — to highlight emotional and non-medical challenges

Four stills from filming: a dialysis machine screen, staff in masks and gowns at a bedside in intensive care, hands unfolding a face mask, and a camera on a tripod outside an ICU room.

Adobe Premiere Pro with the ICU video open, a nurse on screen and the subtitle 'Hi, my name is Niamh and I am an ICU nurse here in the Mater Hospital'.

Three stills from filming patient stories: a camera on a tripod pointed at a seated participant, two people in conversation, and the empty set.

3. Transplant book

Designed a printed patient education booklet to complement the website
Supporting information can be accessed in clinical settings and at home

A hand holding the old booklet open: two dense columns of small text with red headings, no images and no space between sections.

Two hands holding the redesigned booklet open at 'Lifelong care', with a short introduction and five numbered daily self-checks on tinted bands.

4. Service improvements

Alongside the patient-facing elements, several clinical service improvements were implemented, such as:

Improvement of communication system with local healthcare facilities to enable local blood test options for patients
Unifying the process within the multidisciplinary transplant team on redirecting patients to appropriate care pathways