---
title: "Building a design team at Vida Health"
author: Dan Birman
url: https://dbirman.com/vida
updated: 2026-11-09
summary: "Vida Health had gone more than a year without a design leader when I joined."
---

# Building a design team at Vida Health

Senior Director of Design · 3 min

Vida Health had gone more than a year without a design leader when I joined. I handed marketing design to a creative director and put my time into the product, hired a third product designer so the patient app, the clinician tools, and the employer view each had one owner, and built a design system with 200+ components that made the team about three times faster. In one year the app’s average App Store rating rose a full star and NPS rose almost 20 points. Sean Ross, a principal designer on my team, is now Head of Product Design.

Role
:   Senior Director of Design

Team
:   3 product designers; 4 to 5 marketing designers at first

Manager
:   Chief Product Officer

Timeline
:   2022 to 2023

+1★

average App Store rating, in one year

~80

NPS, up almost 20 points

3x

design team speed, after a new design system with 200+ components

## The member app

Vida grew fast during COVID, and the product grew faster than anyone could keep coherent. Features piled onto the member home, with every team fighting for the same screen. Members came to do two things, log their health and reach their care team, and the home made both hard to find. The redesign gave them one home, one vocabulary, and one next action.

[Image: Before: Featured, To-Do, Habits, Trackers and Appointments, all on one screen]

[Image: After: a feelings check-in, then today’s plan as one list, with habits, trackers and to-dos folded together]

The short version. [Ruli](https://dbirman.com/ruli) is the case study I go deep on; for this one, [ask me](mailto:hi@dbirman.com?subject=Building%20a%20design%20team%20at%20Vida%20Health).