Kalderos
OVERVIEW
Kalderos is a data infrastructure and analytics company that created the world's first Drug Discount Management platform. The multi-sided SaaS platform simplifies drug discount compliance (Medicare, Medicaid, 340B, etc…) for all stakeholders, which include drug manufacturers, pharmacies, hospitals, and states.
For the past 5 years, I’ve helped Kalderos transition from a design team of one to an established presence within the product org. I’ve been involved in the design of all our products, establishing our design system and codifying the working norms of the product design team throughout our growth.
My work was more traditional product design execution in the early days. As my role grew, I’ve added service design, team building, and process/org design responsibilities, in addition to hands on designing.
MY ROLE
Product Design Manager
0→1 Product Development
Discovery & User Research
Design Systems
Team Building & Mentorship
DesignOps
OUTCOME
6 -> 20+ manufacturing customers
5.4x increase in CARR 2020-2022
$988M in inaccurate claims identified (2023 Kalderos Annual Report)
842, 537 claims reviewed from 2016 to 2023 (2023 Kalderos Annual Report)
$110M in 340B/MDRP duplicate discounts verified by covered entities (2023 Kalderos Annual Report)
DESIGN FOUNDATIONS
We were originally hired right after Series-A to design and develop a new product offering that ultimately didn’t launch until a few years later (for a variety of reasons). This was a 0-1 effort, where we designed everything from scratch - the information architecture, UX patterns and the look & feel. While this didn’t launch on our originally intended date, this work was used to develop our design principles, our design system, Medora, and would be used to establish the vision for future Kalderos products. The talented Sam Estep and I were the lead designers on this effort.
USER INTERFACE
“Window into Data”
Kalderos’ products are very data heavy, so we design with the principle that we’re creating a “window” into the data you need right now. We have iterated and improved how we view data, filter data, interact and action on that data.
The interface consists of a few elements, which have evolved over time. One evolution is the ability to collapse the App Navigation and Header to maximize the amount of screen space dedicated to reviewing and interacting with data.
Knowing that we have a lot of data elements to surface, we’ve always played with a hierarchy of showing the most important data in the table, and everything else in a drawer. As our products become more complex, the drawer included more elements, such as a double drawer displaying associated claims and a historical timeline of a claims data journey.
Aligning more with our customers’ needs, the tables have evolved to include more interactive elements, allowing pivoting, collapsing, and more complex customization.
MEDORA DESIGN SYSTEM
We designed our products originally using the Semantic UI React library and created custom components as necessary, or borrowed from other open source libraries. Medora started more as a UI style guide for the designers, but overtime we moved away from Semantic and created our own components, which became our design system. Being a small team, all designers were responsible for creating components for Medora as needed. I recently redesigned our Modal component since we didn’t have a standard size we were using.
PRODUCT DISCOVERY & DESIGN OPS
I spend a portion of my time focusing on designOps improving how the team approaches product discovery. Being a startup, we didn’t have an established approach to how we build products, so the design team introduced human-centered methods to our processes, such as journey and experience mapping, service blueprints, and the Jobs-to-be-done framework. Working on a multi-sided platform for customers with different and sometimes conflicting needs, it’s paramount we ensure our customers needs are top of my mind in our approach.
In 2023, I ran a JTBD virtual workshop with 20+ colleagues to redesign how we ingest industry data. Our initial ingestion process was limited in how much data could be ingested, and wasn’t very friendly for our data management team. The JTBD workshop resulted in strategic approach and roadmap that the ingestion product team used to redesign our ingestion process, resulting in a savings of 30-60min per job.
This work was completed collaborating with the talented Product Design Team, including Sam Estep, Harika Bommu, Viet Nguyen, Joe Clay, Laura Kesselring, and James Schuyler.