About

UX strategy and experience design — where the problem gets understood first.

Experience design leadership in regulated environments. 15+ years building UX strategy practices, leading cross-functional teams, and delivering audit-to-recommendation work across healthcare, pharma, and enterprise.

I got into patient-facing UX because the most consequential failures I kept seeing weren't design failures — they were structural ones. The content was right. The sequencing was wrong. The information existed. The architecture didn't support how people actually made decisions under uncertainty. Regulated environments make this harder and more important at the same time.

Open to

Senior UX Director · Head of UX Healthcare · Pharma · Connected Health Wellness · Digital Therapeutics · Enterprise New York City Metropolitan Area · Remote · Hybrid

Current perspective

What I'm sitting with

Healthcare UX still confuses information with understanding.

Patients aren't failing because they lack information. They're failing because the experience doesn't meet them where they are emotionally and cognitively. Adding content is rarely the answer. Rethinking the architecture almost always is.

AI accelerates synthesis. It doesn't replace the judgment about which signal matters.

AI compresses research timelines genuinely. But knowing what to do with the finding, and how to frame it for a clinical or regulatory stakeholder, is still a judgment call. Faster synthesis isn't deeper insight.

The most expensive UX decisions happen before anyone opens a design tool.

Framing the wrong problem correctly is still the wrong problem. The upstream work — reframing the brief, diagnosing the structural gap, understanding what the experience is actually getting in the way of — is where the highest-leverage work lives in regulated healthcare environments.

Career arc

From financial services to pharma — compliance was always the constant.

Through Luria Digital, the boutique UX studio I founded, I spent 15 years building experience design for wealth management, capital markets, and insurance clients — leading a team of ten and establishing the compliance-aware discipline that now defines the regulated pharma practice. That foundation carried directly into UBM Life Sciences, where I led a team of five across UX strategy, information architecture, and digital experience.

The shift into pharma deepened the practice in ways that general UX work doesn't replicate. I've led journey architecture, defined experience frameworks, and translated findings into exec-ready recommendations — working across clinical, regulatory, brand, creative, and analytics disciplines in agency staffing models where clean boundaries don't exist. Abbott: 20% patient drop-off reduction. Verzenio: dual-audience platform cleared MLR in a single cycle. Global Obesity: multi-market deployment across four regulatory environments simultaneously.

Now

Luria Advisory

Fractional UX strategy & CI — regulated environments, active practice while targeting Director/Lead roles full-time.

2020–25

Agency UX Strategy Lead

Healthcare & pharma — Abbott, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, GSK, Pfizer, Amgen. Grey, Arnold, Digitas Health, Havas.

2015–20

UBM Life Sciences

UX Practice Lead — team of 5. Full product design function for regulated B2B healthcare media & events portfolio.

2000–15

Luria Digital

Founder — boutique UX studio. Financial services & enterprise UX. Team of 10. Compliance-aware practice from the start.

Healthcare & Digital Health · Why it transfers

Regulated pharma and digital health share the same underlying problem.

The surface looks different — a pharma DTC platform versus a wellness app or a connected health device. The underlying UX challenge is the same: someone navigating an unfamiliar health situation, under emotional load, trying to understand something complex and act on it.

The behavioral mechanics I've mapped in pharma — readiness staging, progressive disclosure, adherence-aware sequencing — are exactly the architecture that wellness platforms, DTx products, and health-tech onboarding flows need. The regulatory wrapper changes. The judgment doesn't.

Abbott FreeStyle Libre → Connected Health Onboarding

Behavioral sequencing and lifecycle architecture for first-use anxiety and habit formation — applicable to any chronic condition management platform.

Eli Lilly Clinical Trials → Patient Recruitment & Engagement

Decision-support architecture and progressive disclosure logic applicable to patient engagement and research recruitment platforms.

Global Obesity Platform → Wellness & Behavioral Change

Stigma-aware UX framing and multi-market cultural sensitivity — applicable to wellness platforms addressing weight, mental health, and chronic condition management.

Peer & manager feedback

"Rob is the complete package when it comes to UX strategy and leadership. He brings unique, holistic thinking to each project and has an exceptional ability to communicate and collaborate across cross-functional teams to drive best-in-class outcomes. He excels in both client-facing sessions and internal working sessions and leads teams of all sizes with confidence and clarity."

Caine Fair Group Strategy Director · Grey Health
Direct Manager · August 2025

"Rob is a true team player and an asset to both Arnold and its clients. His UX expertise helped guide critical decision-making, simplifying complex information so it was accessible to both internal and client teams. He consistently went beyond the task, worked seamlessly across disciplines, and remained steady under pressure. Rob was a joy to work with and a trusted strategic thought partner."

Connie Bazos VP, Customer Experience & Engagement Strategy · Arnold Worldwide
Direct Manager · March 2022