Case Study / Biopharmaceuticals
Improving Accessibility
and Education for Ocaliva
Primary Biliary Cholangitis is a rare, chronic liver disease with a small patient population, a complex treatment profile, and significant safety considerations that make clear communication a clinical imperative. Intercept Pharmaceuticals engaged Inizio Evoke to overhaul Ocaliva's entire digital ecosystem — patient site, HCP site, and an unbranded disease education platform. I led UX strategy and design direction across all three properties, building an experience that gave patients the clarity and confidence to manage a serious long-term condition, and gave clinicians the evidence and efficiency they needed to prescribe and monitor effectively.
and launched as a unified ecosystem
across patient and HCP properties
across all three platforms
Strategic Challenge
Ocaliva's communication challenges were compounded by the nature of the disease itself. PBC is rare — patients are often isolated, managing a condition most people around them have never heard of, and navigating a treatment that carries a serious safety profile including a black box warning. The existing digital presence wasn't equipped to hold that complexity.
"Three properties needed to be rebuilt from the ground up, each serving a distinct purpose: the patient site to empower and reassure; the HCP site to equip and inform; and the disease site to educate without selling."
Critical safety information was difficult to find. Navigation was confusing. The patient and HCP experiences weren't meaningfully differentiated. And there was no unbranded resource helping patients understand their disease before they reached the branded treatment conversation. Getting all three right simultaneously — within pharmaceutical regulatory constraints — was the central challenge. Each property had to stand alone as a purposeful experience while functioning as part of a coherent ecosystem.
Discovery & Research
I structured the discovery phase to build genuine understanding of both the medical and human dimensions of PBC before any design decisions were made. In a rare disease context, that means understanding not just what patients need to know, but how isolated and underserved they often feel — and designing for that reality from the outset.
Method 01
Stakeholder Interviews
Directed sessions with Intercept's product, marketing, medical affairs, and regulatory teams — with regulatory involvement from day one as a deliberate choice. In a pharma engagement of this complexity, understanding compliance constraints early makes the design process more efficient, not more constrained. We surfaced four consistent pain points: safety information that was hard to find, navigation that confused at key decision moments, insufficient interactivity for complex content, and a patient experience that didn't reflect the emotional reality of living with a chronic liver disease.
Method 02
Competitive Analysis
Led an audit of competitor pharmaceutical and healthcare digital properties to identify where the category was consistently failing. Two failure modes emerged as directly relevant to Ocaliva: HCP sites that served clinical completeness over clinical usability, and patient sites that either oversimplified to the point of being unhelpful or overwhelmed users with undifferentiated medical content. Both were exactly what Ocaliva's existing properties were doing wrong.
Information Architecture
The IA restructuring was the most consequential strategic work of the engagement. Each property needed a content hierarchy built around how its primary user actually processes information — not how Intercept's internal teams organized it. Three properties, three distinct structural logics.
Ocaliva Patient Site — Sitemap
Property 01
Ocaliva Patient Site
Content reorganized around the emotional and practical arc of a PBC patient's experience — building understanding progressively rather than front-loading clinical complexity. Safety information given prominent, consistent placement without dominating the experience.
- Plain language throughout — every clinical concept rewritten for a patient without sacrificing accuracy
- Safety information impossible to miss without being anxiety-inducing
- Patient success stories and supportive imagery reflecting PBC patient diversity
- Treatment options and side effects sequenced to build confidence, not overwhelm
Property 02
Ocaliva HCP Site
Built to serve the specific clinical workflow of physicians evaluating and managing Ocaliva treatment. Fast access to the specific information clinicians need — without navigating through patient-facing content or reorganized clinical evidence.
- Clinical trial data, dosing protocols, and safety monitoring guidelines surfaced first
- Prescribing information clearly delineated and immediately downloadable
- Content density calibrated to professional users who are comfortable with medical detail
- Professional visual palette signaling scientific credibility at entry
Property 03
Living with PBC
An unbranded disease education site serving a different strategic purpose: building category understanding and patient confidence before the treatment conversation begins. Designed to follow a genuine education arc — what PBC is, how it progresses, what questions to ask.
- Education arc following the patient's knowledge journey, not the product's feature set
- Comprehensive glossary addressing terminology patients consistently found confusing
- Dynamic mechanism-of-action animation making complex biology genuinely comprehensible
- Tone of an informed ally, not a pharmaceutical brand
Design Direction
Three properties required three distinct visual registers — each appropriate to its audience and purpose — while remaining recognizably part of the same ecosystem. The design system was the connective tissue. Audience-specific expression was the differentiation strategy.
Patient Site — Supportive & Reassuring
Warm colors, intuitive icons, and clear callouts to surface critical information without making it alarming. Human-centered visuals — patient success photos, simplified diagrams, supportive imagery — conveying hope and care to users managing a serious, often isolating condition. The goal was a site that felt like it understood what it was like to have PBC.
HCP Site — Authoritative & Efficient
A professional, clinical aesthetic that reflected Ocaliva's scientific rigor. Easy-to-navigate sections, downloadable resources prominently placed, and content density that respected clinician time. The site communicated that Intercept understood how physicians actually use digital resources — quickly and with high specificity.
Mechanism of Action Animation
The centerpiece of the Living with PBC site — a dynamic animation depicting how Ocaliva works at a molecular level. A complex biological mechanism that patients consistently struggled to understand became genuinely comprehensible through motion and visual explanation. The single most impactful design decision in the ecosystem for bridging clinical complexity and patient understanding.
Accessibility as a Foundational Constraint
WCAG 2.1 compliance shaped every color, contrast, typography, and interaction decision from the first wireframe — a particular priority for a patient population managing a serious chronic condition, and a non-negotiable requirement for a pharmaceutical digital presence serving users across varying contexts and abilities.
Regulatory-Integrated Design
Every design decision touching content presentation was developed with medical, legal, and regulatory review integrated from the start. In a rare disease context with significant safety considerations, IA choices and content hierarchy carry compliance implications. Building those constraints into the process rather than treating MLR as a post-design filter protected both the timeline and the quality of the final experience.
CMS Infrastructure
A content management system giving Intercept's team the ability to update safety data and clinical information independently as new evidence emerged. In a regulated pharma context where safety labels change and trial data updates, editorial agility is a patient safety consideration — not just an operational convenience.
Ocaliva.com — Patient Site
Unbranded Platform
Living with PBC
The unbranded disease site was the most strategically distinctive of the three properties. An unbranded site serves a different purpose than a branded one: it builds category understanding and patient confidence before the treatment conversation begins — meeting patients at the moment of diagnosis rather than the moment of prescription. I designed the IA to follow a genuine education arc, from what PBC is to how it progresses to what questions patients should be asking their physicians. The mechanism-of-action animation and a comprehensive medical glossary gave patients the tools to become informed participants in their own care. The entire property was designed to feel like an informed ally, not a pharmaceutical company — which required deliberate restraint in branding, tone, and content emphasis throughout.
Living with PBC — Unbranded Disease Education Platform
Outcomes & Impact
The redesigned Ocaliva ecosystem delivered measurable improvements across all three properties — validating both the structural IA decisions and the audience-specific design approach.
Increased Engagement
Both patient and HCP websites saw meaningful increases in engagement metrics — longer time on site and reduced bounce rates — confirming that the restructured navigation and content strategy was serving both audiences more effectively than the previous experience.
Improved Patient Confidence
Simplified language, progressive content sequencing, and the mechanism-of-action animation gave PBC patients meaningfully better tools to understand their condition and treatment — empowering more informed conversations with their healthcare providers.
Full WCAG 2.1 Compliance
Equal access to critical medical information for all users, including those with disabilities — a foundational requirement for a platform serving patients managing a serious chronic condition, and a standard that shaped design decisions from the first wireframe rather than being addressed at the end.
Scalable Content Infrastructure
A CMS architecture enabling Intercept to maintain accurate, up-to-date safety and clinical information independently — ensuring the digital ecosystem could evolve with the evidence base and continue to serve patients and clinicians as Ocaliva's clinical story developed.