Ruby on Rails & UX
redesign for a healthcare
platform
Modernized a donor-conception community platform with a focus on improving conversion from free users to paid memberships. We redesigned user flows, navigation, and enhanced the Ruby on Rails backend.
Business context
The Donor Sibling Registry helps donor-conceived individuals connect with biological relatives. The platform hosts nearly 95,000 members and has linked over 26,000 half-siblings and donors. Users can post for free, subscribe to a paid community membership, search for relatives by donor numbers, and connect. It also offers educational resources, support, and donor conception research.
Project in facts
- Healthcare
- USA
- UX/UI designer, Fullstack developer, QA, BA, PM
- December 2021 – ongoing
- UX/UI audit, Redesign, Code audit, Ruby on Rails development
- Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Sidekiq, Redis, Docker, Tailwind CSS
Challenge
The platform was experiencing a steady decline in paid memberships despite strong engagement from free users. They either failed to see the value of the paid tier or got lost in the checkout flow.
On the engineering side, the codebase had accumulated technical debt and required stabilization before the platform could be extended with new functionality.
Product goals
- Streamline the onboarding and conversion flow to help free users easily access paid membership options
- Restructure navigation and page layouts to establish a clear hierarchy for key actions
- Stabilize and modernize the Ruby on Rails codebase to support continuous feature updates
Solutions
Our designer overhauled core user flows to accelerate the conversion of free users to paid subscriptions. The registration process was streamlined by minimizing mandatory fields and deferring full profile completion until after onboarding. Additionally, we positioned prominent subscription touchpoints across high-traffic pages to maximize visibility and drive premium enrollment.
To improve scanability, we restructured content layouts by breaking up dense text and creating clear visual contrast around primary calls to action. We also updated navigation pathways enabling members to effortlessly locate subscription tiers and account settings.
Conversion-focused onboarding
Simplified registration and shifted profile completion after signup to reduce friction.
Subscription visibility
Added premium touchpoints across high-traffic pages to increase membership exposure.
Information architecture
Reorganized navigation and content hierarchy to surface key actions and subscription paths.
Engineering approach
We extended and stabilized an inherited Ruby on Rails monolith. Our developer handled initial bug fixing, executed a UI rewrite, and deployed critical backend and framework upgrades. Combined with Redis and Sidekiq, Rails reliably handles background tasks.
The frontend was modernized incrementally using Webpacker, jQuery, and Tailwind CSS. To minimize developer dependency for routine updates, we introduced a modular, CMS-driven component system that grants product teams autonomous control over layouts.
Core functionality is supported by third-party integrations: Stripe manages subscription billing, SendGrid handles transactional emails, AWS S3 provides scalable object storage for application assets, Sentry delivers error monitoring to accelerate production debugging.
Business impact
Result
The client received a complete UX/UI redesign across all key user flows, along with a more maintainable content system.
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Stronger account security
Implemented two-factor authentication, email verification, and improved account validation flows. -
Improved communication
Refined email and notification flows for confirmations, validation, and membership-related updates.
Rubyroid Labs were able to quickly learn our very complicated website and address all the items that needed to be repaired. They get a 10 out of 10 from me.
Wendy Kramer, co-founder & director, Donor Sibling Registry 
Need to rebuild information architecture and improve user flows?
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