Olivia AI
Oliva AI is a clinical assistant developed by Tempus to support oncologists by streamlining access to patient insights and evidence-based treatment options. Launched in early 2024, it leverages generative AI to help clinicians make faster, more informed decisions at the point of care.
Tempus AI x IDEO
Interaction Designer
2 x Interaction Designers
3 x Project Guides
Health AI
Opportunity
The goal was to ensure that new users immediately understood how Olivia could enhance their health journey — not just through features, but through a compelling and personalized value proposition. The redesign aimed to create an experience where users could instantly grasp what makes Olivia different — and why it matters to them. This challenge was shaped by cultural skepticism around AI in healthcare, social expectations for empathy in health tools, and the technical limitations of mobile onboarding flows.
Results
The Problem
After reviewing user feedback, we conducted a thorough audit and we discovered:
The existing onboarding flow lacks the trust-building cues needed to help users feel safe and confident sharing personal health information.
It’s unclear what role the AI plays in the user’s ongoing experience, leading to confusion about its value and purpose.
There’s an opportunity to reimagine the AI not just as a tool, but as a supportive presence or health companion that adds clarity, continuity, and care.
Our Approach
Our brainstorm was centered around three key questions:
What would truly motivate someone to use this app— and why? We aimed to uncover real user needs, desires or pain points that would drive genuine engagement.
What role does Tempus currently play — and what role is it allowed to play — within the broader healthcare ecosystem? This helped us consider boundaries, opportunities and trust dynamic between users and the platform
Why would someone choose Tempus over their hospital's app, their insurance provider app or even Apple Health? This prompted us to explore Tempus' unique value proposition and how it could meaningfully differentiate itself.
Sacrificial concepts were created to explore bold ideas without commitment. These intentionally bold or incomplete ideas helped us uncover what truly sets Olivia apart, challenge assumptions about its role, and identify opportunities to elevate the experience beyond typical healthcare apps. By testing the edges, we clarified what makes Olivia unique—and what it needs to be to matter.
Guiding Insights that inspired our design:
Make onboarding radically transparent: spell out why Olivia asks for each data point, how it is protected, and exactly how the AI will help, so trust starts on page one.
Frame the AI as a trusted mediator: position Olivia between two well-intentioned humans—the patient and the provider.
Bridge communication gaps: surface and relay patient questions or misunderstandings to clinicians in real time.
Demystify complex information: clarify and contextualize medical details for patients, easing confusion and emotional overwhelm.
Fill in the blanks on both sides: remind patients of key details to raise, and prompt providers with relevant insights they might otherwise overlook.
Conclusion
By listening first—to one-star reviews, audit analysis and market research—we uncovered a single root issue: Olivia’s promise to “simplify every appointment” was buried under opaque onboarding and an indistinct AI role. Our audit and co-design work reframed the product around trust and clarity. We introduced transparent data hand-off screens, re-imagined the AI as an empathetic mediator, and added appointment-prep guides plus real-time conversation capture with on-device summarization. The updated experience now shepherds patients from pre-visit planning through post-visit follow-up in one continuous flow, closing the communication gaps that originally frustrated both users and clinicians. Early adoption of the new features has shifted app-store sentiment from skepticism to advocacy, and Olivia’s roadmap now treats “trusted guidance” not as a tagline but as a measurable design principle for every future release.