Ro Panel Recap: Empowering Product Design Teams at Mission-Driven Companies
At Ro, product designers are critical voices in shaping user experiences that meet the needs of patients and providers. Ro hosted a virtual panel in May to highlight how important a role product designers play at our company, and to help others learn how to uplift their design teams.
Ro welcomed design leaders to share how product design teams can foster cross-functional collaboration and innovation at their companies and earn a place at the table influencing key strategies and decisions.
Product designers are central to the development of their companies’ platforms, tools, and features. These creative minds work in tandem with technical teams, from engineers to product managers, to deliver solutions designed to serve their end-users. Their unique perspectives and nuanced understanding of users make product designers valuable contributors to projects and initiatives across the organization.
During Ro’s panel, speakers offered best practices for designers and insights for their organizations on how to empower product design teams and give them a seat at the table.
“A Seat at the Table: Empowering Product Design Teams at Mission-Driven Companies” featured expert discussion from:
- Lisa deBettencourt, Founder and Principal, Forge Harmonic
- Michelle Matthew, Product Design Lead, BetterUp
- Pacssu Park, Director of Product Design, Ro
- Saman Rahmanian, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, Ro (Moderator)
If you didn’t have a chance to attend this panel, you can find a full recording of the event below:
Meet Our Panelists
Michelle Matthews is a design leader and former social worker with a passion for human-centered, inclusive, trauma-informed design. They are currently Product Design Lead at BetterUp, designing solutions to unlock greater human potential, purpose, and passion in each and every person as well as an instructor teaching User Experience Design at UCLA. Previously they led design for the health subsidiary of Headspace, one of the world’s leading mindfulness apps. She has also served as the Head of User Experience at Soothe (on-demand home massages) and has consulted for many health and wellness start-ups, including Heal, Hatch, Manatee, Folx Health, Tone it Up, and Ferly.
Lisa deBettencourt is a product strategy and design leader. She works with organizations in healthcare and life sciences to design next-generation patient and clinical experiences amidst increasing consumer expectations, regulatory restrictions, and technological complexity. After nearly 25 years in-house she founded Forge Harmonic, an innovation and strategic design firm that envisions the future of care and designs the products and services that deliver it.
As a co-founder of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) and founder of its Boston chapter, Lisa is a veteran in the product design community and speaks internationally on topics in leadership and design for healthcare. She co-authored Designing for Emerging Technologies: UX for Genomics, Robotics, and the Internet of Things and recently taught design for emerging technologies at Northeastern University until the pandemic hit. You can find her moderating the Leading Design Slack Community and kicking off InVision’s new Healthcare Design Leadership Forum this month.
Pacssu Park was the first Product Designer at Ro, helping to build and scale Ro’s vertically integrated platform, and now as Director of Product Design leads a team in designing seamless, end-to-end healthcare experiences for Ro’s patients as well as the tools providers and pharmacists need to deliver high-quality care. In this role, Pacssu is responsible for helping to set the design strategy, vision, and frameworks to further Ro’s mission of building a patient-centric healthcare system. She is also dedicated to fostering the Design Team’s culture, one that promotes everyone’s creativity and collective contribution, as well as cross-functional collaboration across Ro.
Prior to Ro, Pacssu was Head of Design at Arabella, where she worked with founders and corporations to design early-stage products across a variety of industries. She has also worked at The Science Project, The Science Project, a boutique creative agency, as a User Experience Designer advancing concepts for omni-channel retail experience from research through execution, and as a Design at Poke and BauerHouse Creative. Pacssu has her MA in Commercial and Advertising Art from Savannah College of Art and Design and BA in Linguistics from The Ohio State University.
Saman Rahmanian focuses on leveraging technology to empower patients and providers with the tools they need to make healthcare more affordable, convenient, and accessible. He is focused on expanding Ro’s vertically integrated primary care platform to address a growing scope of patient concerns. Saman is also central to instilling Ro’s collaborative culture and has led the integration of medical professionals into Ro’s product development process, ensuring clinical input from ideation to launch. He also leads Ro’s incubations and special projects within the company.
Prior to Ro, Saman co-founded Managed by Q, the smart office management company acquired by WeWork in 2019. He also holds a partner role at Prehype, a venture development firm that incubates new businesses within Fortune 500 corporations. Before Prehype, Saman had a decorated career as an advertising creative director, becoming the fifth most awarded creative around the globe in 2010. He has been recognized by Business Insider as a 30 Under 40 leader in Healthcare. Saman earned his B.S.c at Brunel University London in Multimedia Technology and Designs.
