Sydney Cooper, Digital Health UX Designer on Career Pivoting Within the Healthcare Industry

Throughout the past 20 years, the term “digital health”, has grown to become a trendy field that professionals and investors have been flocking towards. Digital health, ultimately, refers to the intersection of healthcare and technology. We have witnessed the vast impact tech has had on other industries such as media & entertainment and finance. Now, healthcare is itching for its own tech revolution. Some of the problems healthcare is hoping to leverage tech to solve for include:

• Limited patient engagement 
• Data fragmentation; lack of interoperability and challenges in sharing health information across different systems
• Workforce shortages
• Prevalence of chronic conditions
• Geographical barriers

Sydney Cooper, MPH, UXC is one of the dedicated healthcare professionals actively working towards solving some of healthcare’s most pressing issues. Sydney is a healthcare blogger, UX designer & researcher, wellness enthusiast, and Health In Her Hue's community events moderator. Sydney received her B.S. in Health Management from Howard University and her Master of Public Health from Boston University. During graduate school, she started her healthcare blog, Your Healthcare Scoop, to begin bridging the knowledge gap between healthcare professionals and the people that use the healthcare system everyday. 

In this article, Sydney walks us through her healthcare career trajectory with hopes that this inspires other future healthcare leaders to career pivot and take on new challenges within the healthcare industry. 

Check out Sydney’s Career Trajectory:

From Undergrad at Howard University to Boston University’s School of Public Health Graduate Program

Rather than taking a gap year, Sydney went straight to graduate school. While at the time, she had wished she took a gap year, she now sees that going straight to grad school was the better decision for her as she may not have considered going back to school at all.

Blue Cross Blue Shield Internship:

While Sydney was in grad school, she had a practicum, which is the same thing as an internship for grad school, at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. This internship was specifically catered to developing her skills in corporate strategy. She had no idea what corporate strategy meant but knew this was her opportunity to break into healthcare. She ultimately delivered on competitive intelligence and performed market analysis of the healthcare industry. This type of work allows the company to stay competitive. Sydney realized that the main focus of this type of work is to make the company more money and was less about direct impact on the patients. Unfortunately, this was not fulfilling to her. This meant she needed to pivot. While working in this internship, she attended the Centered Design Week. This series of design workshops required that participants design a healthcare product that didn't exist anywhere on the market. Through this program, Sydney committed to:

• Sketching/Whiteboarding
• Designing
• Building
• Prototyping

This also required that Sydney and her team go out into the streets of Boston to interview actual people on the idea of their product. They came back, iterated on it and then presented it to the company's C-suite leadership team. After presenting, Sydney connected with a Black Woman Executive Leader within the innovation space who inspired Sydney to become more intentional about the activity by taking it on as a career.

Risk & Financial Advisory Consultant at Deloitte

Sydney jokes,

I decided to go work at Deloitte, which is where a lot of people go when they don't know what they want to do, but, want to make a lot of money. So that is what I did.

For two years, Sydney worked at Deloitte as a Risk & Financial Advisory Consultant for healthcare companies. However, she realized that this industry was not for her. Sydney considers herself a “ Type B individual” where, on the other hand, those dedicated to consulting tend to be “Type A”. At this moment, she knew that she had to get scrappy and think through her next steps. She realized that she had learned so much about healthcare while serving in this role. Working with various types of companies in industries such as private or specialty pharmacies, hospital, health insurance, gave her clarity on what’s not working in healthcare. She decided it was time to return to a healthcare institution. 

Strategic Market Planning Consultant at Kaiser Permanente, Her Dream Company

Once no longer interested in Deloitte, Sydney took on a new opportunity at Kaiser Permanente doing strategy work. Her role focused on keeping access open to members of Kaiser. Within just one month after landing this dream company, she experienced what she considers to be “a quarter life crisis” leading to a BIG move from the east coast to California with just two suitcases and her shipped car. She had never been to California prior but felt the need to take on a whole new adventure and fully commit to this next stage of her life and career. While she loved Kaiser and enjoyed working there, she couldn’t fight the urge of wanting more opportunities that allowed her to directly impact patients in a way that she could actually see. This required another grand change in her career: UX.

Researching New Health Career Opportunities

Sydney took time to think to herself, “what was the most meaningful experience of my career, thus far?” She realized that attending the Human Centered Design Week at Blue Cross Blue Shield was the most memorable. After going down a rabbit hole of researching more about design, Sydney reached out to her old mentor to seek advice. This conversation led to her taking the Google x Coursera for UX and Design course. She also realized,

Wait, I know that Google is teaching us how to do UX for the consumer industry. But, what if we could bring that into healthcare? Everybody uses health care; there has to be someone already doing this. Like this can't be a novel idea.

This meant it was time to network. 

Networking and Relationship Building in Pursuit of a New Design Career

While still fulfilling her strategy duties at Kaiser Permanente, Sydney began “cold DM’ing” design professionals who could educate her on what it means to effectively work as a designer. She ended up connecting with a design professional who lived in Oakland, CA working at Blue Shield of California. This person also mentioned that the company was seeking a new UX Researcher. This woman fully grasped how passionate Sydney was about taking on this new career journey and introduced Sydney to her manager who was hiring for this role. The team admired Sydney’s professional background and passion for this new route in healthcare and decided to hire her.

Sydney was able to officially quit her strategy role and start her new and improved digital health career as a UX Designer working with Blue Cross California! What a pivot! 

For everyone considering a new career in digital health, specifically in design, Sydney has recommendations regarding skills you want to improve. Check them out, below. 

Qualitative Skills vs. Quantitative Skills in UX

These skills are crucial when designing experiences for patients. It's not just about numbers and how many people are going to use your product. It's actually about how the user feels when engaging with your product. You want to know:

• What motivates them to use it?
• What fears or barriers do they have when interacting with the company and its product?

Healthcare is an industry that patients, rightfully so, frequently question and it is very important to be empathetic towards their healthcare experiences.

Being an Avid Listener

As a designer, you need to actively listen to patients during user interviews. You want them to see how interested you are in what they have to say.  You must engage with them by asking follow-up questions and truly deep diving into what they are trying to convey to you.

Usability Research

It is important to observe how people interact with your product. You can do this through usability research. Why is this important? While you may think something is simple to navigate, this may not be the case for a user who does not often engage with tech. You need to allow them to use your product, give feedback and be willing to make necessary iterations. 

Key Traits of an Effective UX Researcher

Be Trustworthy: Everyone does not react the same way to every question being asked. You must acquire the necessary emotional intelligence to create a safe space for all of your users to freely answer interview questions with no judgment. You must remember that all users:

• Do not live the same lifestyle
• Are not of the same cultural backgrounds
• Are not within the same age group
• Do not engage with healthcare and technology in the same way

You must be mindful of these. Sydney breaks this down furthermore by stating,

I'm a black woman coming to a user asking them 50 interview questions about their sensitive medical history. Depending on who they are, and their identity, they may not receive my questions the way I hope they would. For that reason, I have to be able to navigate their personalities and/or read them in a way that I can ask questions and not overstep any boundaries.

For those of you wanting to pivot within healthcare but just don’t know where to go, Sydney has some kind words for you. She mentions,

Try to talk to as many people as you possibly can. Unfortunately, in healthcare and the corporate world, you don't know what you're getting yourself into until you actually do it. Never be afraid to pivot. Yeah, it sounds intimidating, but even if you are 40, it’s okay to pivot; you still have another half of your life to go before retiring. Never be afraid to pivot and never be afraid to try new things. Talk to as many people as you want. People in the healthcare industry are friendly, and they love to talk about their career trajectory. Why? Because a lot of us have tried a lot of different things. Leverage those informal conversations to build your network. Just try it. It’s worth it.

Interested in connecting with Sydney? Connect with her on LinkedIn, here.

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Interested in making a career pivot into a business and tech role? Check out these two resources I created for professionals like you:

25 In-Demand Business & Tech Roles for 2024

16 Journal Prompts for Pivoting into Business & Tech Roles