The Full Story

El Rio serves every corner of Pima County, regardless of a patient’s ability to pay, which meant the website had to work for radically different groups of people arriving with radically different needs. I built the UX strategy around El Rio’s four primary audiences: new patients trying to find trustworthy care for the first time, returning patients who just needed a fast path to their provider or next appointment, people browsing job openings drawn in by El Rio's mission, and donors looking for a clear, transparent view into where their support went. Every navigation decision traced back to one of those four and what they'd actually be searching for the moment they landed on the site.

The old website buried a lot of what El Rio actually offers, 15 locations and a service list that includes specialty care and community programs that many first-time visitors wouldn’t expect from a community health network. We rebuilt around visual navigation instead of dense text lists, custom iconography for every service and photography that was woven directly into the menu as visual cards.

El Rio's existing brand ran on purple and lime green, and part of the job was modernizing the site without losing that identity. We pulled back to a base of white, grey, and black, then let the purple and lime green live in the UI itself — buttons, cards, the small moments of color that guide someone through the site rather than compete with the content.

El Rio commissioned a full photoshoot across their locations and services, casting models who actually reflected the community they serve, a real range of age, race, ability, and gender identity. I spent significant time in the raw files afterward, editing every image so the final library felt warm and welcoming rather than clinical.