Native product design × accessibility × systems
Rebuilding two healthcare apps around accessibility and scale.
I led an accessibility-focused rewrite of the BCBS FEP native iOS and Android apps, updating more than 200 screens on each platform and creating a design system for each app to keep the experiences coherent at scale.
The opportunity
Accessibility improvements had to work across two mature apps—not just individual screens.
The rewrite covered more than 200 screens in iOS and another 200+ in Android. The immediate need was accessibility remediation, but fixing issues screen by screen would have created a new consistency problem at enormous scale.
The challenge was to improve accessibility while preserving coherent interaction patterns across two native platforms, each with its own behaviors, conventions, and implementation constraints.
The idea
Treat accessibility remediation and system design as the same piece of work.
Rather than solving accessibility issues as one-off screen changes, we used the rewrite to establish reusable patterns, component behavior, spacing rules, and guidance within each app’s design system.
How might we remediate accessibility across 400+ native screens without creating 400+ one-off fixes?
Accessibility by design
Accessibility became a product constraint, not a final review step.
The work incorporated accessibility expectations directly into the design language: contrast requirements, component guidance, practical usage rules, and repeatable patterns that could be applied across hundreds of screens. That shifted accessibility from screen-level remediation toward a more durable system-level practice.
Building the systems
A design system for each app supported iOS and Android at scale.
Axure was the primary design tool for the app rewrite. Within that work, we created roughly 150 reusable components across the two systems and documented anatomy, states, spacing, and behavior so each native app could remain coherent across more than 200 screens.
Systems in action
Two native design systems, expressed across hundreds of screens.
The systems mattered because accessible decisions had to survive contact with real member workflows.
The rewritten apps supported very different member needs—from home and account experiences to care discovery and claims. Within each platform, consistent component logic, spacing, hierarchy, and accessibility expectations created continuity while respecting native behavior.
What came next
The app rewrite became the foundation for a later Figma migration.
After the native rewrite, I led a separate effort to migrate the work from Axure into Figma. That project expanded beyond the apps and also touched other BCBS experiences, including the member dashboard. It was a continuation of the system work—but distinct from the accessibility-focused app rewrite itself.
Scale + impact
Accessibility remediation became a scalable systems practice.
The rewrite improved accessibility across two large native applications while establishing reusable patterns capable of supporting more than 400 screens. Instead of treating remediation as hundreds of isolated fixes, each app gained a design system that made accessible product decisions more repeatable at scale.