In this guest blog for Medic, YUX Design’s Melissah Weya shares how the two organizations co-designed task prioritization in the Community Health Toolkit to help community health workers identify urgent care needs faster.
A Day in the Life of a Community Health Worker
Rose*, a community health worker (CHW) in Kenya, never experiences the same day twice. She manages over 110 households and is the first point of contact for families navigating pregnancy, childhood illness, chronic disease, and everyday health needs. She serves as a vital link between these communities and the nearest health facility.
“My days begin in different ways,” she says. “Some mornings, I have people knocking at my door very early, wanting to get to work. On other days, I start a bit later and head out to the field when there are no visitors at my house.”
Her work is a dynamic mix of planned visits, community training, and sudden emergencies. She takes pride in her role, viewing it as service to her community, which knows she is always there for them. This is the reality for CHWs who use the Community Health Toolkit (CHT) across Kenya, Zanzibar, and beyond every day.
The Challenge: Helping CHWs Quickly Spot Priority Tasks
A CHT-powered app helps community health workers like Rose to manage their workloads by prompting them with tasks to plan their day, including completing follow-up visits and other activities.
However, faced with multiple due and overdue tasks in the app, it can become overwhelming for CHWs to evaluate which are most urgent.
With this in mind, Medic partnered with YUX Design to answer the question: How can we redesign the task list user interface (UI) to help CHWs prioritize and optimize care delivery?
What Does Co-design Look Like in Real Life?
We knew we needed to design with users, rather than for them. We teamed up with 12 community health workers and their supervisors in Kenya and Zanzibar to understand how CHWs think, the challenges they face each day, and how they identify priority tasks.
This participatory research turned the design process into a two-way conversation. We shared two prototypes directly with CHWs and supervisors during usability tests, observing what people noticed first, what they ignored, and where they hesitated.
Assumptions vs Learnings
We came into the project with assumptions about what users needed, but through authentic conversations, we made discoveries that challenged them:
1. The App Sets Priorities and Workflows, but CHWs Make Room for Real-time Emergencies
Instead, conversations revealed a different approach. CHWs rely on clinical training, community knowledge, and real-time judgment when deciding what is urgent. They’re trained on danger signs to look out for, they know the family history of each household, and at times face situations where they have to make quick decisions on what is a priority.
“What comes first is when there is an emergency, my work doesn’t tie me to what I have registered in the CHT app or the households that I had registered,” says John*, a CHP. “You can find that, within the community, somebody is dealing with an emergency, and that person needs critical attention. I have to put other things on hold and ensure that this person is attended to.”
They described a clear hierarchy for action:
- Real emergencies in the community
- Clinical danger signs
- Scheduled tasks in the app
This hierarchy shapes how they move through their tasks. We needed to ensure that the UI supports this approach by making urgent cases visible and helping CHWs to act with confidence in fast-changing situations.
2. Priority should work as a system of cues
In UI design, visual cues, such as colors, can often signal urgency or priority without creating alarm or overwhelm. This held true for CHWs.
When we asked supervisors how they onboard new CHPs to the new Tasks UI, they described using visual indicators to communicate priority: “Supervisors can use color to guide CHWs on which tasks require more attention. This could also help those who struggle with reading or have issues with their eyesight,” says Mary*, a Community Health Assistant.
Red often works as a strong cue. Many participants saw red and immediately associated it with a sense of urgency. “Red means danger. Those are the ones for today. I start there,” says Kate, a community health volunteer.
However, others did not pick up the meaning until they were specifically asked to focus on the color. “I can see that there are some things that are red, that there is something, but I don’t know what it is for,” says Veronica*, a Community Health Promoter.
This showed that color alone is not enough. The UI needed to work within a system of cues where color, typography, and arrangement reinforce each other to be effective for CHWs.
What We Built and Why: The Value of UI Design
One of the prototypes emerged as the clear direction. “You see those tasks in red, those should be done today. They are a priority,” one CHW explained. The design worked because it aligned with how they already thought about clinical issues and urgency.
But testing revealed further refinements were needed. Some participants initially missed the priority indicators or required extra time to notice them. Exploring the text used and filter menus created revealed language barriers and accessibility challenges that needed addressing.
We used these insights to enhance the design. The revised version now combines color and typography cues to accommodate different levels of literacy and visual impairment. We also improved color contrast and emphasis to make priority tasks instantly visible.
This design validates what CHWs already know, while making their decisions more visible and accessible.
Looking Ahead
The CHT Community is exploring how to roll out these findings in future work. This project reinforces that effective technology for community health comes from human-centered design: collaboration with the people who use it.
Engaging directly with community health workers was energizing. Even through virtual sessions, we gained a clear view of their daily realities, how they use the CHT, and the responsibility they carry within their communities. Their work, care, and commitment stood out in every conversation.
For me personally, working with the Medic team affirmed why we do participatory, human-centred design at YUX Design. The Community Health Toolkit is a global public good that supports over 177,000 health workers across 23 countries, and contributing to its design felt incredibly meaningful.
*Names have been omitted to protect participant privacy.
This work was conducted by Medic in partnership with YUX Design in Kenya and Zanzibar, Oct-Nov 2025