Shayam Parasram

What I've Done

What I've Done

What I've Done

Smarter Onboarding for Caregivers at Sunbound

The Challenge

Sunbound simplifies billing for senior living communities, helping families and caregivers stay on top of rent and care payments. But we discovered a major gap in our onboarding experience: what happens when someone is paying for more than one loved one?

Our system, by default, only allowed one resident per account. But many caregivers—especially adult children—were financially managing care for both parents. And the current workaround? A backend patch that merged balances and confused everyone.

Prompt

Redesign the first-time user experience to support multiple residents under a single payor account—without creating unnecessary friction or complexity.

The Human Side of Billing

Our primary user was “Daughter Deb”—a persona representing a family caregiver juggling finances for both mom and dad. Her needs were clear:

  • Keep invoices separate (for reimbursement or taxes)

  • Manage different payment methods per resident

  • Get through onboarding without calling support

We kicked things off with 6 deep-dive interviews with our core user: the Business Office Manager (BOM), often the administrative heart of these communities. Alongside them stood the payors; sometimes Independent Residents, but more often their adult children or designated caregivers.

Digging into the Pain

Working alongside our Director of Customer Success, I led a cross-functional onboarding audit. We conducted:

  • A user journey workshop with the Customer Ops team

  • Analysis of top monthly support tickets

We discovered that:

  • The #2 most common support issue was confusion during first-time sign-in

  • Users managing multiple residents had no self-serve option and had to wait for engineering intervention

  • The current system created combined balances under one generic “joint resident,” obscuring accountability and breaking reimbursement workflows

Designing a Smarter Onboarding Flow

The goal was clear: empower payors to onboard multiple residents with clarity and control—no calls to support required.

Key Design Principles

  • One account, multiple residents—each with their own balance, history, and preferences

  • Flexible payment methods—assign different cards or banks to different residents

  • Minimal added friction—same number of steps for a single resident as before

I redesigned the first-time sign-in flow to:

  • Ask whether the user is managing care for one or multiple residents

  • Offer a guided path to add another resident during setup—or later

  • Display a resident selector in the dashboard to toggle views easily

  • Separate invoices, communications, and payment records by resident

My Boldest Contribution

What I’m most proud of is designing for flexibility without complicating the experience. While our target was the adult child caregiver, I future-proofed the system to accommodate case managers, powers of attorney (POAs), and third-party payors—anyone who might need clean, separate records across multiple residents.

This wasn’t just a new feature—it was a shift in how we thought about accounts, identity, and responsibilities on the platform.

The Outcome

Reduced support calls by giving users autonomy at onboarding

  • Eliminated backend workarounds for the Customer Success team

  • Enabled new user types to adopt Sunbound’s platform—extending our value for more complex care scenarios

We moved from a brittle, one-size-fits-all system to a more human, adaptable design—reflecting the real lives of our users and the complexity of caregiving today.

Framer 2023

Amsterdam