2019, Healthcare
Turning dental anxiety into a simpler patient journey
Lumino, New Zealand’s largest dental provider, was replatforming its digital experience across New Zealand and Australia. As the solo Lead UX Designer, I led the research and experience design for a new patient journey focused on making dental care easier to understand, find and book.
The redesign contributed to a 92% increase in online conversions.
Lead UX Designer · Research · Journey design · Information architecture · Validation
The Ask
Lumino needed to modernise an ageing digital experience while making it easier for patients to understand their options, find the right practice and take the next step towards treatment.
The challenge was to create an experience that worked across New Zealand and Australia, reduced friction for patients and supported a more scalable digital platform.
The Solution
Research revealed that choosing a dentist wasn’t simply a functional task. Cost uncertainty, fear of pain and embarrassment about dental health were major barriers to taking action.
That changed how I approached the experience. Rather than organising the site around dental terminology and internal service categories, I focused on the questions and concerns patients actually arrived with — making pricing clearer, simplifying clinical language and helping people find care based on their needs.
I restructured dental information around the problems patients were trying to solve rather than clinical terminology. Research and card sorting helped simplify the information architecture, making treatments easier to understand and navigate.
I also introduced location-based practice discovery, showing new patients their nearest clinics and allowing returning patients to save a preferred “My Practice.” This made it easier to move from researching treatment to finding the right place to book. Usability testing helped refine the experience before launch.
Joanne Tuck Head of Marketing at Lumino The Dentists
“It’s been pretty fantastic for Lumino. The website certainly delivers a market leading online experience.”
The Result
The redesigned experience contributed to a 92% increase in online conversions and 76% growth in website traffic, while giving Lumino a more scalable digital foundation across New Zealand and Australia.
Research fundamentally changed how the experience was structured. Dental jargon and service-led navigation were replaced with clearer, patient-focused information, while location and practice personalisation made it easier for people to move from researching a concern to finding the right care.
The result was a simpler, more reassuring patient journey that better reflected how people actually think about dental care — and, as Lumino’s Head of Marketing described it, delivered a “market leading online experience.”
92%
increase in online conversions
76%
increase in traffic growth
