Gating status, live as of June 30, 2026
The full case returns HTTP 200 and delivers the complete case-study HTML before a client-side localStorage check (pf_access_v1) fires a redirect to /login.html. The content is in the browser before the gate closes. Anyone with View Source or a curl command sees everything.
The teaser is openly accessible. No gating script.
The homepage still links to what-do-you-count.html. Same pattern: full HTML delivery before a client-side JS password gate. A pricing-strategy essay behind a JavaScript lock on an open door.
Move the access check server-side or accept that the case is public. A Ramp interviewer with any engineering instinct will inspect your site. A Headway panel probably won't, but the teaser/full-case inconsistencies covered below will confuse anyone who encounters both versions.
One more item before the audit. The full case hero says 2020. The teaser hero says 2021. The narrative references a 2021 relaunch. Pick one. A date discrepancy in the first screen creates credibility drag out of proportion to the error.
Buyer lens
Two reads frame every finding below.
Headway-type buyer. Looking for evidence that you treat healthcare-adjacent regulatory constraints as design material. Headway's product surfaces involve insurance verification, provider credentialing, patient data. Their panel wants to see that compliance shaped your decisions, that regulation was visible in the work.
Ramp-type buyer. Looking for evidence that you can hold a single strategic logic across two product surfaces serving different users within the same system. Ramp's card product and spend-management dashboard express one financial-control thesis. Their panel wants to see that your consumer and provider tracks are two interfaces to one idea.
Where these reads diverge on a finding, I'll flag it. Where they converge, the recommendation serves both.
1. Unified strategic premise before the tracks diverge
The "before / needed" section establishes that Brilliant Distinctions was transactional, fragmented, underperforming. The approach section introduces two tracks and six decisions. The transformation maps for Track A (transaction → relationship) and Track B (billing tool → retention tool) appear after the approach intro.
The gap. No single sentence, anywhere before the tracks diverge, names the unified loyalty logic both surfaces express. The teaser's bridge line ("patient see the point / practice see the patient") does this work beautifully. It lives in the teaser, not in the full case.
A Ramp buyer finishes the approach section and sees two well-structured product stories. They still haven't encountered the architectural claim that makes this a dual-surface case. A Headway buyer has the same problem but weights it toward the patient-provider loop rather than architectural elegance.
Add one strategic-premise sentence between "before / needed" and the approach section. Set it apart visually. Something like:
"Allē's redesign thesis: a loyalty program only works when both surfaces reinforce the same retention logic. The member needs a reason to return between treatments. The practice needs a reason to reach out before the member lapses. Each surface fails without the other."
That sentence becomes the anchor the reader holds while reading both tracks. Without it, the reader infers the connection. A Director+ panel should not have to infer your strategic premise.
2. Decision-rationale depth within the A·01–B·03 format
The format is strong. Each decision block uses a clean two-part structure: "The problem" and "Why this solution." Consistent rhythm across six decisions. Communicates structured thinking. Preserve it.
The gap. Zero decision blocks name an alternative that was considered and rejected. No instances of "alternative," "tradeoff," "considered," or "why not" in the visible text. Every block explains what was done. None explain what was passed over.
A Ramp buyer evaluates decision quality by looking for evidence you held multiple options and chose deliberately. "Why this solution" reads as post-hoc justification unless it's set against a named alternative. A Headway buyer weights this toward constraint-driven tradeoffs: what did you want to do that regulation, clinical timing, or organizational politics wouldn't allow?
Add a third label to two or three decision blocks: "What we weighed" or "The alternative we rejected." One to two sentences each. Don't restructure. Extend.
Best candidates:
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A·01 (balance to progress). The milestone architecture is a strong choice. Why milestones over a streak mechanic, a tier-countdown, or a simple expiry-warning system? If the answer is that streaks punish irregular treatment cycles (and in aesthetics, visits are 3–6 months apart, so they do), say that. That's a healthcare-adjacent design constraint expressed through decision rationale. Serves both buyer reads.
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B·01 (default sort). Defaulting to expiring-points-soonest is sharp. The obvious alternative was recency-of-visit or alphabetical-with-filters. If you rejected recency because it surfaces active patients who don't need intervention while burying lapsing patients who do, say that. That's dual-surface thinking: the provider surface catches the members the consumer surface is losing.
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B·03 (provider voice). Sending reactivation emails under the practice name rather than the Allergan brand is the most strategically interesting decision in the case. The rejected alternative (brand-sent emails) is obvious. The reason (patients trust their provider, not a pharmaceutical company) is obvious. State the obvious anyway. Naming the rejected path tells the panel you made a deliberate choice rather than followed a brief.
3. IC + manager proof through narrative
The hero line establishes the role: Product Design Director, team of 3 product designers, UX research, brand. That's the only place leadership scope appears. The six decision blocks describe what the product does. Leadership, team structure, organizational navigation — absent.
This is the widest gap in the case for a Director+ read. A Headway or Ramp panel is evaluating whether you can lead a team through a complex, multi-surface program inside a large organization. Allergan is AbbVie. The current case gives them no evidence of organizational navigation beyond the credits line.
No mention of how you structured work across three designers. No mention of stakeholder tension between consumer and provider priorities when they competed for resources. No mention of alignment with product management, engineering, or the business on scope and sequencing.
Embed leadership evidence into two or three decision blocks where it naturally belongs. Don't add a separate "leadership" section. That reads as defensive.
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In A·03 (appointment to evidence). The before/after photo feature in medical aesthetics almost certainly required conversations with legal, medical affairs, or compliance about patient imagery and clinical claims. If those conversations happened, add one sentence: "Surfacing before/after imagery required alignment with Allergan's medical-affairs team on what constituted a clinical claim versus a personal record. We scoped the feature to member-only visibility with no provider access to patient-uploaded photos, which satisfied the review and preserved the member's sense of ownership." Strongest for Headway read.
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In the approach section. One sentence about team structure: "I organized the three-designer team by surface, not by feature, so each designer held the full context of their surface's user. Cross-surface alignment happened in weekly crits where we tested whether a consumer-side change created a provider-side gap." Strongest for Ramp read.
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In B·03 (provider voice). Letting practices send emails under their own name using Allergan's platform and patient data is an organizational decision. Someone had to agree to let the brand recede. Name the tension: "Allergan's marketing team had historically controlled all member communications. Shifting send-authority to individual practices required a positioning argument we built with the product lead: reactivation rates from provider-voiced outreach versus brand-voiced outreach in the pilot." Serves both reads.
If you only have time for one embed, pick based on the panel. Facing Headway: A·03. Facing Ramp: the approach-section team sentence. Facing either with limited time: B·03.
4. Consumer and provider tracks as expressions of one loyalty logic
Track A is framed as "transaction to relationship." Track B is framed as "billing tool to retention tool." The teaser's bridge line connects them. The full case's closing line ("built for the channel / redesigned for the relationship") gestures at unity.
Between the approach section and the closing line, the two tracks run in parallel without cross-referencing each other. A·01's expiry notification drives reactivation on the consumer side. B·01's default sort surfaces expiring-points patients on the provider side. These are the same loyalty mechanic expressed on two surfaces. The case never says that.
A Ramp buyer notices this absence immediately. Dual-surface coherence is their core product problem. They want to see that you designed the provider sort because of the consumer notification, that the logic flowed across surfaces deliberately.
Add explicit cross-references between paired decisions. Two sentences, placed in blocks that already exist.
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In A·01, after describing the expiry notification: "This notification is the consumer half of a two-surface retention mechanic. The provider half is B·01: when a member's points near expiry, their row rises in the practice's default sort, giving the practice a reason to reach out before the member lapses."
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In B·01, after describing the default sort: "The sort order mirrors the consumer app's notification logic. Members approaching expiry see a push notification (A·01). Their providers see the same urgency expressed as list position. Neither surface works alone."
Two sentences total. The case goes from reading as two parallel redesigns to reading as one system with two interfaces. Disproportionate return on minimal effort.
5. Outcome attribution
The hero presents three outcome metrics: 3.2× redemption, 47% reactivation, $42 CAC. A·02 explicitly attributes 2.4× conversion and the $42 CAC to the care-plan feature. The expiry notification is attributed a 47% open rate with 68% of reactivating members citing it as their return reason.
Two credibility risks and one framing issue.
3.2× redemption floats as an aggregate outcome. It appears in the hero and in visual contexts but is never tied to a specific decision block. A Director+ panel discounts unattributed aggregate metrics because they can't separate your contribution from market conditions, engineering changes, or marketing spend. Attribute it. If it's the aggregate effect of A·01 + A·02 + A·03 together, say that: "Across the three consumer-side decisions, member redemption rate tripled. The largest single contributor was the care-plan flow (A·02), which converted members at 2.4× the rate of front-desk enrollment."
The hero says "47% reactivation." The narrative says "47% open rate" on expiry notifications, then attributes 68% of reactivating members citing that notification as their return reason. An open rate and a reactivation rate are not the same metric. If both numbers happen to be 47%, clarify the coincidence explicitly. If the hero is mislabeling the open rate as a reactivation rate, fix it tonight.
A data-literate panel member who catches this conflation will discount every other number in the case. The work may be real, but the presentation suggests the candidate can't distinguish between metric types, and that's what the panel takes away.
$42 CAC framing. The narrative describes a reduction from $92 to $42. Provider analytics mockups describe $42 against a "$92 industry average." Pick the internal before/after framing. It's stronger because it implies you moved the number.
6. Healthcare-adjacent regulatory context
The case is rich with healthcare-adjacent product language: BOTOX, Juvéderm, treatment cycles, clinical timing, before/after imagery, provider-patient relationships. The domain is unmistakable.
Zero visible references to HIPAA, FDA, regulatory review, compliance, privacy constraints, or consent flows. Clinical timing appears as a product-design input. The regulatory and legal stakeholders who imposed constraints on that timing are invisible.
This gap matters asymmetrically. A Headway buyer will read the absence as a signal that you designed in healthcare-adjacent space without engaging with the regulatory layer. Headway's entire product is shaped by insurance regulation, provider credentialing, and patient-data handling. They need to see regulation treated as design material. A Ramp buyer will care less. They'll evaluate the Allē case on dual-surface logic, not regulatory depth.
If regulatory or legal constraints shaped any of these six decisions, name them. You don't need to retrofit a compliance narrative. You need one well-placed sentence.
The strongest candidate is A·03 (before/after photos). Patient imagery in medical aesthetics sits adjacent to clinical-claims regulation and patient-privacy requirements. Even one sentence transforms the read: "Before/after capture was scoped to member-private storage with no provider visibility, a constraint from Allergan's medical-affairs review that preserved clinical-claims boundaries while giving members ownership of their progress record."
One regulatory reference. That's the distance between "happened to work in healthcare" and a case where regulatory constraints visibly shaped design decisions. A Headway panel is calibrating exactly this.
Priority stack
Reading this the night before a presentation. Here's the order.
- Fix the 47% ambiguity. Highest credibility risk. Ten minutes.
- Add the unified-premise sentence before the tracks diverge. Five minutes. Changes the entire structural read for a Ramp panel.
- Add cross-references between A·01 and B·01. Two sentences. Ten minutes. Parallel tracks become a coherent system.
- Add one "alternative rejected" rationale to B·03. Your strongest decision, most improved by naming the path you passed over.
- Embed one leadership sentence in A·03 or B·03. Whichever had the harder organizational conversation. Pick by buyer: A·03 for Headway, B·03 for Ramp.
- Add one regulatory-constraint sentence to A·03. The decision most likely to have involved a compliance stakeholder.
Everything below this line is cleanup. Do it next week. None of it changes a panel's evaluation: the date discrepancy (2020 vs. 2021), the teaser's B·02/B·03 numbering mismatch, the client-side gating architecture.
What loses you the role is a Director+ panel that finishes reading and knows what you designed but can't answer three questions: How did you lead? What did you reject? Were the two surfaces one idea?
Most hiring committees won't reconvene until Monday the 6th. The long weekend is a window. Use it.
- Headway's two open roles: The Design Director, Provider Experience posting names AI-powered session notes and co-pilot features alongside the provider workflow surface that maps directly to Allē's Track B.
- Ramp's agentic CX signal: Beyond the Director of Product Design role, Ramp's Product Manager, Agentic CX posting reveals the company is actively defining how AI agents and human operators divide work, which makes the Trust essay a strong pairing with the Allē dual-surface proof.
- Gusto as a parallel target: The Senior Product Design Manager, Payroll role updated June 25 centers payroll correctness and trust for small businesses, and Allē's exception-first provider logic (B·01, B·02) maps cleanly to that "complexity in the system, not the interface" framing.
- Full-case gating across the portfolio: Every full case URL, not just Allē, delivers complete HTML before the client-side redirect fires, so the gating fix should be portfolio-wide rather than page-by-page.