Serenity

My work spanned the entire Serenity brand experience: identity, web, packaging, product design, and the internal Laboratory Information Management System. The role gave me direct access to a world-class medical director and leading geneticists, with practical exposure to biology, genomics, and genome sequencing that translated straight into the design choices.

Linear brand development was a luxury Serenity didn't have. In an agile environment where urgency was constant, brand considerations would normally show up late, after product and market readiness. The fix was to work laterally: running brand development simultaneously with everything else, with a methodical awareness of every initiative across fidelities at once. It looked chaotic at the task level. At the system level, it produced a cohesive brand.

A new website brief from the VP of Marketing kicked off the creative arc. We started with moodboarding and sitemap wireframing per her instructions, then built the web UI through frequent founder reviews. Each presentation became an opportunity to introduce new logo marks and ancillary assets in tangible form. The unconventional process worked. It led to official approval to expand the brand identity across every future product.

Each project milestone meant splitting and allocating tasks across the team to maintain pace, while building out the all-encompassing design system and brand guidelines the company would rely on long after the launch sprint.

With the design system in place, the velocity gains were immediate. Shared components — buttons, text fields, fonts, color — turned weeks of work into days. In two weeks we built and prototyped a customized Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS). In a month we shipped department-specific portals serving lab physicians, geneticists, operations, sales, and fulfillment. As designer and product manager, my role was to facilitate and integrate the logic and design of each departmental experience cleanly.

Used to be a thing.

The presentation of the concierge collection experience was, charitably, non-existent. Physicians arrived to patients with assorted instruments, plastic bags, and unlabeled boxes. The gap was both aesthetic and functional, with samples at real risk of damage in transit. Ji Kim from Strategic Operations and I saw this as a chance to convert the abstract product offering into a tangible, considered experience the patient could actually interface with. The founder gave us free reign to develop the Serenity Concierge Collection Kit.

We deconstructed packaging of every kind, from the unassuming to the most beloved brands. Material samples, sourced by our lab's own Helen, played a central role. Every tactile sensation, weight, and aesthetic detail was considered. We measured and sketched an industrial design specification covering the Master Carton, Sub Boxes, and foam. While Ji shaped the Standard Operating Procedure, I laid the groundwork for the internal and external platform designs that followed.

I designed the form factor in Blender, working from the initial specification. As consensus around the project grew, feedback from stakeholders, investors, and the cross-functional teams produced multiple iterations of the kit. At this stage, functional use of color (led by Grace Erickson and Kristin Bayle) and messaging (by Brian Frost and Jennifer Freiling) came into the build.

Ji's expertise with vendors in China and Vietnam landed us our first prototype faster than I'd seen on any project of comparable scope. The milestone validated the form factor and opened the next ideation pass on the packaging of essential materials inside the kit.

After revisions on the prototype, we landed on a final specification. The first orders went out to family-and-friends investors. A new first impression was established. The kit became the interfaceable product flagshipping the brand.