Shortly after joining SimplePractice in the Spring of 2023, I found myself contemplating a question that has haunted our industry since the dawn of digital product design: How do we create value that serves both the soul of design and the engine of business growth? In healthcare software, this challenge takes on special significance — every design decision we make directly impacts a practitioner’s ability to provide care, manage their practice, and ultimately serve their patients better.
The challenge isn’t new, but its urgency has never been more apparent. In today’s product-led growth companies, we’ve watched design teams and business units drift apart like continents, each speaking their own language, each pursuing their own north star. Yet, during that year’s Product and Engineering onsite at SimplePractice HQ in beautiful Santa Monica, California — our leadership team discovered something profound: the possibility of a new design organization that bridges this divide.
The Growth Designer’s Formula
What emerged was a formula, elegant in its simplicity yet powerful in its implications. Great growth design, we realized, isn’t about choosing between user value and business metrics — it’s about understanding their inherent interconnectedness. The formula considers five crucial elements: how we generate value for customers, how we create business value, how we scale adoption, how willing customers are to pay, and how we differentiate in the market. Each element is a thread in a larger tapestry of product success.
Consider how this formula plays out in a feature like automated insurance verification. The customer value is clear: reducing administrative burden and preventing claim rejections. The business value emerges in increased platform usage and reduced support costs. Scale adoption comes from making the feature accessible to practices of all sizes. Market differentiation appears in the seamless integration with practice workflow. When these elements align, customer willingness to pay naturally follows — practitioners can easily connect the feature to their bottom line.
The Language of Value
But formulas alone don’t transform organizations. The real work lies in nurturing designers who can speak fluently in both the language of user experience and business metrics. These aren’t just numbers on a dashboard — they’re stories about our success in serving human needs. Monthly Recurring Revenue tells us how consistently we’re delivering value. Customer Lifetime Value reveals the depth of our relationships. Net Promoter Score whispers secrets about our emotional resonance with users.
Growth Design Patterns in Healthcare SaaS
These principles materialize in three key moments where users make crucial decisions about their relationship with our products:
The First-Time User Journey
In healthcare software, the initial experience of setting up a practice can make or break adoption. Our growth designers craft a journey of progressive revelation, celebrating key setup milestones while naturally surfacing premium capabilities. When a practitioner first sets up their clinical documentation templates, we don’t just offer basic forms — we show them how advanced templates in higher tiers could streamline their specific type of practice.
The Upgrade Journey
As therapists or healthcare providers grow their practices, they begin to bump against the ceiling of their current plan’s capabilities. Our growth designers anticipate these moments, crafting experiences that feel less like upselling and more like natural evolution. When a solo practitioner starts adding their first contractors, we don’t just tell them about our Group Practice plan — we show them how their workflow could transform with sophisticated calendar management and individual practitioner portals. When they begin offering telehealth services more frequently, we illustrate how our Professional tier could enhance their virtual waiting room experience and provide advanced session notes templates.
The Retention Journey
In healthcare software, where a practice’s entire workflow hangs in the balance, the downgrade experience isn’t just about retention — it’s about understanding. When a mental health practitioner hovers over that “downgrade” button, overwhelmed by their monthly expenses, our growth designers craft a journey of rediscovery. They might surface how many insurance claims were processed last month, reveal the time saved on scheduling, or gently remind them of the HIPAA-compliant features they rely on daily. It’s not about creating friction; it’s about illuminating value.
The Unique Challenge of Healthcare SaaS
In healthcare SaaS specifically, growth designers tackle unique challenges that bridge business growth with literal care outcomes. They design intuitive insurance eligibility verification flows that encourage premium feature adoption while reducing claim rejections. They create compelling documentation tools that satisfy both clinical requirements and practice efficiency needs, naturally showcasing how advanced features in higher tiers can further streamline workflows.
Perhaps most distinctively, our growth designers have transformed what could be seen as restrictive requirements — HIPAA compliance, audit trails, secure messaging — into differentiating features that demonstrate value. Every security feature becomes an opportunity to show practitioners how we’re protecting their practice and their patients. Every compliance requirement becomes a chance to demonstrate how we’re making complex regulations manageable.
Building the Future
To build this new breed of design organization, we need to reshape our fundamental approach. Design briefs now weave together business context and user needs like warp and weft. Our review processes have evolved to consider not just aesthetic excellence and usability, but market differentiation and growth potential. Each design decision is an opportunity to create harmony between user needs and business objectives.
Perhaps most crucially, we’re fostering a culture where curiosity about business strategy is as natural as curiosity about user behavior. Our designers now regularly engage with product marketing, business strategy, and customer success teams — not as outsiders, but as integral partners in defining what success looks like.
The Path Forward
This transformation isn’t about compromising design principles — it’s about expanding our canvas. When designers deeply understand and contribute to business strategy, they become powerful agents of both growth and user advocacy. The result is an organization that creates not just beautiful, usable products, but ones that drive sustainable business growth while maintaining unwavering empathy for user needs.
In the end, this is the future of product design in PLG companies: a practice where every design decision is informed by both human needs and business strategy, creating a virtuous cycle of growth and value creation. It’s a future where designers don’t just craft experiences — they craft success. And in healthcare software, that success translates directly to better care outcomes, more efficient practices, and ultimately, healthier patients.