The fragmented toolkitNot a software problem, a context-switching problem
Most therapists don't have a software problem. They have a context-switching problem. Zoom for video calls. Google Docs for session notes. Stripe for billing. Three tools, three logins, and constant mental overhead that has nothing to do with caring for patients.
Therasee existed to solve that. My goal was to lead the evolution of a unified workspace centralising these functions into one high-security ecosystem, moving the platform beyond a basic tool into a practice management suite built specifically for mental health professionals.
The right next moveNot what to build, but what to build first
The base product existed, but therapists still reached for external tools for their primary clinical workflows. That made the question one of sequencing, which required working directly with the founders and a cohort of early-adopter therapists to separate must-haves from nice-to-haves before a single pixel moved.
A competitive audit of the two main incumbents, SimplePractice and Therasoft, revealed a consistent gap: neither offered note-taking during an active video call. Therapists had to pause the session, switch applications, type, and re-engage. It was the single most disruptive point in the clinical workflow and nobody had solved it.
Switching tabs during a session was the friction. Every other problem was downstream of this one.
Note-taking during live calls. Therapists had to break session continuity to switch between video and documentation tools.
A clinical workspace where the session never stops. The differentiation was not a feature, it was the elimination of an interruption affecting every single session.
Working while you talkA product logic challenge, not a design one
Moving from external video links to an integrated system needed host controls that worked the way therapists expected, privacy standards meeting HIPAA and GDPR, and a workspace that let clinicians do real clinical work without breaking eye contact with their patient.
Host controls covered the table stakes: waiting rooms, screen sharing, integrated session chat. The defining feature was the side-by-side workspace, letting therapists view patient history and take encrypted notes in the same view as the call, without minimising or switching windows.
The technical collaboration was non-trivial. Partnering with engineers to hold low latency while enforcing end-to-end encryption meant trading video quality against compliance headroom. Those calls required understanding the clinical context, why a dropped frame during a sensitive disclosure is a real problem, and the engineering constraint, where the compliance floor actually sits.
Design as infrastructureThe hidden tax of designing in isolation
Rapid expansion creates a hidden tax: every feature designed in isolation means engineers rebuilding UI from scratch and designers re-solving solved problems. At Therasee's pace, that accumulation would have become the product's primary bottleneck.
The answer was a system decision, not a design decision. I selected and adapted the Untitled UI component framework, not for aesthetics but as product strategy, so engineering could build new modules from a pre-validated library. When invoicing or scheduling needed adding, the components existed. The work became configuration, not construction.
Every feature rebuilt from scratch. Design decisions weren't reusable. Engineering time went to UI plumbing rather than product logic, and inconsistency accumulated with every release.
New modules assembled from validated components. The playbook gave engineers a shared mental model. Consistency held as the product scaled, without a full audit after every release.
Vision to productionSequence beats speed
The most consistent work here was translation: founder vision into engineering-ready specs, engineering constraints into trade-offs the business could reason about. That interface, between non-technical founders and a delivery team, is where most early-stage products lose coherence. Holding it required detailed user stories, functional prototypes, and a release cadence matched to a therapist's actual day.
Release management was not just about shipping features, it was about shipping them in the right order. Notes before scheduling. Scheduling before billing. Get the sequence wrong and adoption stalls at every transition point.