Health Insurance Apps

Research
client
CVS/Aetna
project type
Research
Year
2020

Problem Statement

Aetna is an enormous healthcare organization with 100’s of medical experts and insurance specialists. Overtime, the consumer facing website and mobile applications began to reflect how these experts viewed healthcare and insurance rather than the customer's understanding of their services. This impacted user satisfaction with the service by making critical health information and tools hard to understand, find, and use.

The Objective

Restructure the web and mobile applications to mirror a customer's perspective of insurance and health care to help users successfully find and complete tasks. Customer success leads to healthier outcomes and cost savings for members.

The Approach

1. Explore the problem

My goal was to understand the issue rather than merely assuming it. It involves speaking to and spending time with people who are affected by the issues.

This discovery methods on this project included:

  • Stakeholder interviews
  • Customer interviews
  • Conversations with support
  • Review analytics
  • Competitive analysis
  • Studying analogous products
  • Heuristic evaluations
  • Content audit

Discovery documents
Synthesis of member's top tasks and users ability to successfully complete each task

Continued research informed Design Sprint Workshops to communicate the urgency to executives, stakeholders, and subject matter experts

Insights into why members are not being successful by combining quotes, words from interviews and data from analytics

2. Decide what to work on

The insights gathered from the discovery phase can help to define the challenge in a different way.

The Definition methods used on this project included:

  • Product workshops
  • Design studio workshops

Definition documents

A combination of competitive analysis and working with health insurance SMEs allowed us to align on a Concept Model for the web and mobile application

Results from user research to get an understanding on when people expect tasks to be completed

3. Test potential solutions

Give different answers to the clearly defined problem, seeking inspiration from elsewhere and co-designing with a range of different people.

The Development methods and deliverables used on this project included:

  • Lean MVPs
  • Sitemaps
  • Tree tests
  • Workflow diagrams
  • Lo-fi sketches
  • Mid-fi prototypes
  • Usability tests
  • Solution tests

Development Documents
For the visual designers, we created a competitive and comparative analysis of the most used mobile applications. This helped to benchmark the look-and-feel of popular apps.

Review design patterns for iOS, Android, and the mobile web, I ran a Design Studio workshop to align the team on rough concepts

After the design studio, I converted the rough sketches into clickable prototypes so engineering and leadership could give feedback on  basic functionality

Prototypes for the web application were built to communicate the new structure, navigation and labeling

Mid-fi clickable prototypes were created communicate navigation, structure, and labeling to get stakeholder approval and to take into usability testing

4. Refine final solution

Testing out different solutions at small-scale, rejecting those that will not work and improving the ones that will.

The Delivery methods and deliverables used on this project include:

  • Type scale
  • Design patterns
  • Mock-ups
  • Critiques
  • Annotated designs
  • Analytics
  • A/B tests

Delivery Documents

Results from one of the several moderated and unmoderated usability tests I ran to guide the final design

Working with the visual design team, we translated the research and information architecture work into deliverable designs

The Outcome

By the end of the research, workshops, and user research we had a solution that worked much better for the user and the business.Success rates went from below 50% in some parts of the application to over 90%. This was a dramatic in delivering value to the customer at the end of the process.

Additional Projects

Let's work together

I'd love to help add value to your project or organization. I'm open to consulting or contract engagement for any sized company from early stage start-ups to multinational enterprise corporations.

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