Exseed is a company that makes home fertility tests for men. You get a small device and an app, and it lets you check sperm quality, count, and movement at home instead of going to a clinic.
01/06 – Challange
Everyone assumed the UI
needed fixing. They were wrong.
- ASSUMED PROBLEM
– The UI needed redesigning
– Users didn’t understand the product
– Conversion was a design problem
– Pharmacies weren’t selling it well enough
ExSeed is a health-tech company making home male fertility testing accessible — a device and app that lets men check sperm quality, count, and movement at home.
The brief pointed toward a UI problem: low adoption, poor conversion, weak engagement. The instinct was to redesign the product experience and fix the screens.
But before touching a single screen, I chose to go upstream — to understand why people weren’t engaging in the first place. That decision changed everything.
- ACTUAL DISCOVERED PROBLEM
– Awareness was the real barrier — not UI
– Male fertility is a taboo topic men avoid
– Young people had zero education on fertility
– Schools and pharmacies were untapped channels
– Schools and pharmacies were untapped channel
“Through research, we identified key contributing factors including lifestyle, environmental, and genetic factors — yet awareness remained critically low across all channels.”
— RESEARCH FOUNDATION, EXSEED PROJECT
02/06 – Research
150+ touchpoints.
ONE CLEAR ANSWER.
I designed and executed a multi-layered research approach — covering pharmacies, schools, and clinical professionals to map the full ecosystem, not just the product touchpoints.
Clinical interviews
School research
Pharmacy research
Competitor analysis
Lifestyle factor mapping
Stakeholder presentation
50+
100+
5
1
03/06 – Findings
What the research
actually revealed
Awareness, not UI, was the barrier
Young men had zero education on fertility
Pharmacies were underleveraged
Lifestyle factors were unknown to users
The strategic pivot
Stop trying to sell a product.
Start building awareness.
The research pointed to one conclusion: ExSeed’s real opportunity wasn’t a better checkout flow or a redesigned dashboard. It was becoming the trusted voice on male fertility education — before men even knew they needed the product.
- From product redesign → awareness strategy
- From product redesign → awareness strategy
- From product redesign → awareness strategy
04/06 – Solutions
An infographic that became
a curriculum tool
a curriculum tool
The tangible output was an infographic poster on male fertility — designed to be used in high schools as an educational resource. Simple, approachable, evidence-backed. Built to start conversations.
Output 01
Infographic poster
Output 02
Research report & strategy deck
Output 03
Channel strategy recommendations
05/06 – Skills demostrated
What this project, actually shows
This project demonstrates something most designers at my level don’t show: the ability to question the problem before solving it.
Discovery-led design means treating the brief as a hypothesis, not a fact. I proved that here — and the output was a strategic pivot that influenced the product direction of a real company.
I also navigated internal resistance — stakeholders who expected a UI recommendation, not a channel strategy pivot. Building alignment through evidence is a skill, and this project tested it directly.
01 | Discovery before design
02 | Stakeholder communication
03 | Research to recommendation
04 | End-to-end ownership
06/06 – Reflection
What I learned
This project fundamentally changed how I approach design briefs. The brief is always a hypothesis. The real problem is almost always upstream from where it first appears.
It also showed me that the hardest part of research isn’t collecting data — it’s presenting conclusions that challenge assumptions people already hold.
- Always question the brief — the real problem is usually upstream from where it looks
- 150+ data points means nothing without synthesis — the skill is in the "so what"
- Navigating stakeholder resistance is a design skill as real as Figma
- The best design output here wasn't a screen — it was a strategic recommendation that got implemented
FIGMA | Infographic design & layout
Illustrator | Visual assets & poster production
Photoshop | Image treatment & composition
Interviews | Clinical professionals, school staff
Surveys | 50+ pharmacies, 100+ schools
Competitor analysis Market gap identification