Iterias · Healthcare & Wellbeing
Building a service and brand able to feel approachable, expert and ready to grow.
Clariane, one of Europe’s leading care groups, wanted to launch a new psychotherapy service. The challenge was to create a proposition that could fit the group’s wider ecosystem, build on its care expertise and stand apart through its own identity and value proposition.
- Role
- Head of Design Strategy
- Capabilities
- Brand Strategy · Strategic Research · Service Design · UX Strategy
01CONTEXT
Entering a market where everyone talks about mental health.
The starting point was to build the brand for a new psychotherapy service.
But the market was oversaturated: platforms, coaches, mindfulness, holistic propositions and volume-driven services shared a space where customers found it difficult to distinguish what was genuinely trustworthy.
The opportunity was not simply to create another therapy brand.
We had to build a proposition people could trust.
02REFRAMING
The brand could not be a layer. It had to begin with strategy.
Before deciding how Iterias should speak or look, we needed to understand the space it could occupy.
The new proposition had to build on Clariane’s care expertise, while developing a distinctive personality of its own.
That meant first defining what value to provide, for whom, how the service should feel and what would make it recognisable in the market.
The identity would be the consequence of solid strategic foundations.
03RESEARCH
Not everyone arrives at therapy from the same place.
We researched both prospective and current psychotherapy users and the professionals who would become part of Iterias.
Among users, we found different levels of maturity in relation to therapy.
01
Starting
People unsure whether they needed help, which professional to choose, whom to trust, or who even felt some embarrassment about starting therapy.
02
Continuing
People with previous experience looking for a welcoming, trustworthy environment in which to build a strong therapeutic relationship.
03
Expecting more
People familiar with therapy who needed to see specialisation, experience, robust approaches and professional credibility from the outset.
The same brand had to reassure someone who did not know how to begin and feel credible to someone who knew exactly what to expect.
04THE SUPPORT NETWORK
One therapist in front of you. A network of support and knowledge behind them.
Internal research revealed another fundamental need.
Although one professional would establish the therapeutic relationship with the patient, they needed to be able to draw on a wider network whenever treatment required it: psychiatry, nutrition or psychologists specialising in particular issues.
Clariane could provide that multidisciplinary support.
We also understood that specialisation needed to be expressed through problems people recognise —grief, relationships, depression…—, not only through professional categories that are difficult to interpret.
Iterias had to give patients access to the right professional and give therapists a support network ensuring broader knowledge and capabilities.
05POSITIONING
Approachable without being superficial. Expert without feeling cold. Global without losing humanity.
That was the sweet spot.
The strategic proposition could be summarised internally as:
Expert psychotherapy adapted to each patient by an approachable, multidisciplinary team, helping them regain stability.
We did not want to build a brand that simply promised wellbeing.
We wanted to build a solid, trustworthy and human service, with professionals genuinely able to help and a clear objective: regaining balance.
06DESIGNING TRUST
A simple experience for getting started, with depth for those who need to know more.
The solution needed to allow people to explore the service at different levels of depth.
A clear, approachable, jargon-free first layer made Iterias easy to approach. From there, anyone needing more information could explore content, specialisms, treatments and professional expertise.
This also shaped how therapists were presented.
We did not want to hide them behind the brand. They were the people who would build the therapeutic relationship.
The experience therefore let people see who each professional was, their experience, training, specialism and the issues they could help with.
Trust would not be built by saying we were experts, but by letting people see who would treat them and why they were the right person.
The experience was conceived from the outset as a hybrid service, where the clinic and digital environment formed part of the same relationship. The digital MVP enabled access to the service, appointment management and communication, complementing the in-person experience.
We also defined a service evolution roadmap, prioritising future improvements by their impact on people’s experience and the therapeutic team’s ability to deliver the service.
07FROM STRATEGY TO BRAND
When strategy, service and identity begin with the same knowledge, everything starts to fit.
The identity was built on the same foundations that defined the value proposition and experience.
Approachability, reassurance and calm were translated into tone, voice, colour palette, forms and imagery.
Expertise became tangible through explanatory content, recognisable specialisms and the visible presence of professionals.
The aesthetic moved closer to healthcare and medicine, but through simpler, warmer and more human language.
The experience sought consistency across patient, therapist, digital environment and physical space, so every touchpoint followed the same direction.
The brand had to create the trust needed for the therapeutic relationship to begin on the right footing.
08SCALABILITY
Iterias had to work in Barcelona, but also be ready to grow.
Clariane conceived the service as a pilot with the potential to expand later to other cities and group markets.
That ambition also influenced the naming and how we shaped it.
Iterias comes from iter, path or journey: an idea connected to the therapeutic process and recognisable enough to work across different languages.
The brand needed its own personality, but also the ability to grow without losing its identity.
09OUTCOME
What we designed became the real service.
- BARCELONA
- MADRID
- NEW CITIES / POTENTIAL MARKETS
Iterias initially launched in Barcelona and later opened a centre in Madrid, with plans to continue growing.
The proposition was implemented following the direction developed across brand, digital experience and in-person service, carrying one strategic direction from the website through to the physical space.
The identity also reached the clinic and became a central element in creating the service atmosphere.
Today we can see the result operating in the market.
We designed a service from its strategic foundations, with an experience that prepared it to expand into new cities and markets.
10MY ROLE
Head of Design Strategy
I transformed the initial brand brief into a broader strategic challenge and led the direction from research through to its translation into brand and experience.
I led the design approach, the research and, in particular, the resulting synthesis and strategic narrative.
I defined the foundations of the value proposition and positioning, established the overall architecture and narrative of the web experience, and led the presentation and defence of decisions with the client.
Key responsibilities
Strategic framing
Research direction
Sensemaking
Brand & service strategy
UX strategy
Executive storytelling
Team
2 UX Researchers · Branding Strategist · UX Writer · Project Director
11REFLECTION
Do not lose sight of the person within the system.
We design processes, services and digital experiences, but people are the ones who use them.
This is particularly clear in mental health, but it also applies in many other moments of vulnerability: a health issue, financial difficulty, an insurance claim or any uncertain situation.
People need systems that do more than function: systems that know how to understand and support them in vulnerable moments.
Designing services also means designing how an organisation makes people feel when they most need to be understood.