Photo Check
Smile Snapshot
Next Steps
Dental care is reactive: cost, anxiety, and access barriers delay action until problems escalate.
Positioned JustSmile around prevention, habit formation, and AI guidance: not diagnosis.
Four product decisions balanced behavior change, trust, onboarding friction, and homepage clarity.
Problem
Pain, cost, uncertainty, and limited access often push people to seek care only after problems escalate.
Americans lack dental insurance
spent annually on preventable emergency dental visits
Americans have traveled abroad for dental care
Research
To understand where preventative support breaks down, we explored three questions:
Most products assumed users already had access to care.
Dental.com, Cigna SmartScan, and DentalMonitoring focused on monitoring and treatment rather than prevention.
Habit-building products showed how small rewards create long-term engagement.
Flo, Finch, and Toothy used low-friction onboarding, habit loops, and positive reinforcement to support repeated use.
Cost and uncertainty delayed care
Trust shaped willingness to use AI
Habit-building felt easier than treatment
Users wanted actionable next steps
Opportunity: affordable prevention, behavior reinforcement, low-stakes AI guidance, and support outside clinics.
Key Decisions
Tooth characters celebrate progress and make preventative care feel more approachable than traditional dental experiences.
Dental branding research highlighted blue as a signal of trust and professionalism, while green reinforced health and prevention. We used both as foundational colors, then reserved orange and purple for monitoring and guidance.
Research showed that lower commitment experiences encouraged engagement, so onboarding focused on goals and habits before introducing AI features.
Users opened JustSmile looking for reassurance or direction, so the homepage prioritized their latest Smile Snapshot, followed by habits, progress, and coaching resources.
Solution
Encourages action before symptoms become emergencies.
Impact
Early prototypes were tested with dental experts and potential users to evaluate onboarding, scanning, and habit engagement.
Tested with a dental hygienist, a former dentist, and potential users.
Users questioned scan accuracy.
Added reassurance around scan limitations and reframed results as guidance, not diagnosis.
Photo quality felt difficult.
Added clearer image capture guidance before scanning.
The brushing coach resonated strongly.
Prioritized habits earlier in the experience and strengthened routine-based onboarding.
Funding secured
$1,000 Gebhardt Sandbox Fund
Awarded to continue validating preventative oral health support.
JustSmile is an ongoing project. Current efforts focus on improving AI reliability and exploring pathways to real-world adoption.
