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Project
001
Holistic care experiences for healthy insurances
Curating a vision and roadmap for transforming patient experiences through care, support and building agency.
Info
002
Role
Role
Role
Experience Design Lead & Strategist
Experience Design Lead & Strategist
Experience Design Lead & Strategist
Timeline
Timeline
Timeline
November 2021 - February 2022
November 2021 - February 2022
November 2021 - February 2022
Tools
Tools
Tools
Figma, Sketch, Invision, Miro
Figma, Sketch, Invision, Miro
Figma, Sketch, Invision, Miro
Team
Team
Team
2 UX designers, 1 Visual Designer, 1 Co-lead
2 UX designers, 1 Visual Designer, 1 Co-lead
2 UX designers, 1 Visual Designer, 1 Co-lead
Independence Blue Cross (IBC) was looking to transform its Member Experience on digital channels. As a part of this transformation IBC engaged UST to create a vision and roadmap of how the member experience can be transformed across its digital channels. We co-created with them during this period to build member experience concepts and roadmap for transformation through workshops, interviews and detailed design concepts.
View Case Study ↗
Objective
003
Goal:
IBC wanted to upgrade their strategy to understand their opportunities for patient-centered digital experiences.
Internal teams to the organization needed to identify existing pain points and prioritize towards common goals for efficient handoff between different departments
Patients needed simple and clear access towards their bills, claims and benefits as they onboarded on their health-care journey with IBC.
Result:
Over the course of 12 weeks, we reimagined the core of IBC's healthcare ecosystem with concepts rooted in innovation, health care quality, access, experience and cost.
We deconstructed their internal business relationships along with their current patient pain points to balance the needs of patients, medical practices, and IBC themselves.
Deliverables:
Customer Journey
Iterative Product Design
Feature Prioritization
Ideation Workshops
Brand Strategy & Positioning
Competitive Anlaysis
Stakeholder Mapping
Visual Design
Evaluative User Feedback
Facilitating conversations to equip IBC to cater towards proposed innovation driven concepts.
Before conceptualizing towards a future of seamless experiences, IBC needed to identify their business goals, inter-organizational priorities and their pain points to build a product concept for their patients. We divided the entire engagement into 4 steps catering towards their goals and patient needs.
View Research Deck ↗
Discover
Aligned with the business to understand its current state and vision, identified ecosystem hurdles, and built an in-depth understanding of services and solutions. Focused on accurately assessing business objectives, constraints, and success criteria.
Research
Conducted primary and secondary research to validate offerings, captured customer feedback, and identified gaps in the member experience. Shadowed users and derived insights from qualitative and quantitative research to bridge experience gaps
Ideate
Explored conceptual possibilities and developed a foundation for experience innovation. Rapidly prototyped ideas to fill experience gaps and aligned the new experience with IBC's vision.
Validate
Defined and verified the direction towards a desired future state, involving key participants to identify resonant ideas. Developed a cohesive concepts to move closer to the desired experience.
Research activities
004
We facilitated conversations for over 25 leaders with IBC about value proposition canvas, business goals and customer journey workshops. These activities allowed us to better understand IBC's positioning, and learn more about the goals, values, and visions already in place within the organization.
1
Patient interviews for real-time feedback
Interviewed participants using questions about the usability of their member portals, difficulties faced, reactions, and problem resolution. Discovered that today’s health insurance users readily engage with digital portals like websites and apps. Responses indicated interest in data ownership, improved communication, seamless digital integration, utilizing incentives, and a cohesive, trustworthy brand language.
We conducted a heuristic evaluation of the health insurance app, identifying usability issues that could hinder access to essential services like claims and billing. These findings helped the team prioritize improvements, creating a more user-friendly experience that aligned with user needs and promoted better engagement.
2
Stakeholder analysis through cross-functional perspectives
During our stakeholder interviews we were able to find common topics where the IBC team felt there were gaps in the current solutions provided to IBC Members. We consolidated the sentiments from those conversations into our Emerging Pain Points, and Experience Gaps.
I led an opportunity discovery process using the Value Proposition Canvas to identify unmet user needs and align the product more closely with user expectations. These insights allowed the team to prioritize features that addressed users' pain points, strengthening the product’s value proposition and improving its relevance in the market.
3
Value proposition canvas and mapping business goals
The Value Proposition Canvas is a vital tool for aligning IBC's vision with the specific needs and desires of its patients and target audiences. We, systematically explored customer pains, gains, and jobs, alongside the product's features and benefits, to ensures that offerings resonate with user expectations and mapped it over to the organizational business goals.
We designed to create a centralized platform where providers can efficiently manage their services, appointments, and client interactions. Through the dashboard, providers can access real-time data, track member progress, and streamline administrative tasks while elimination information overload for members.
We built a detailed goal mapping intiative for IBC's leaders to identify and align with their most recent priorities. This helped mark the organizational views as well as the scalability for design initiatives and efforts.
4
Gaps in member journeys, the past and future.
The customer journey activity navigates through the emotions, experiences, and interactions members have with IBC’s digital experience. It is designed from multiple perspectives, starting externally from the perspective of a potential user of IBC, then focusing into what happens when a potential user becomes a member user and interacts with the portal.
Challenges
005
During our engagement, we identified industry-wide gaps through surveys, secondary research, and competitive analysis. We categorized these gaps into external integrations, information access, building agency, and customization. Common issues included barriers from third-party data integrations, information access problems, the desire for health task ownership, and lack of customization. These observations guided our further analysis and helped us establish key principles for the digital transformation.
Insights & Actionability
Information overload or gap between the primary information available to the user on the dashboard to gather insights and encourage actions.
Discoverability
Accessing important information is challenging as users try to navigate between bills, deductibles, approvals etc.
Information inaccuracy
Connection between outside parties (Vendors, Medicare, PCPs, etc.) and users’ overall health outlook is broken, and inaccurate information is presented at times.
Lack of clarity
Despite the benefit snapshot, users do not find the information they need when concerned about their benefits or trying to understand them in detail.
Inconsistencies
The need to access 3rd party sites for information (sometimes hidden behind a login) breaks the control IBC has on visual language and the digital experience.
Transactional relationship
Users seem to only use the portal when there is a life event, they are sick, or they have an issue to resolve.
Lack of context
The digital experience lacks personalization, prioritized content, and real-time feedback over user actions.
Who were we designing for?
005
With IBC's response & clinical teams, we identified user types to tailor solutions that met their diverse needs and preferences. This approach ensured that digital portals and tools are accessible, user-friendly, and capable of addressing specific pain points and requirements of each group. This thorough understanding enabled us to create a more personalized and cohesive healthcare experience, fostering trust, reliability, and better engagement with our digital solutions.
People between the ages of 25-65+ year old.
Individual Policy Buyers
Someone entrusted to care of a member, possibly a family member
Members’ Personal Representatives
Members under the age of 18 who are the dependents of other family members.
Dependents
Someone who is entrusted with the care of a member, possibly a family member.
Care Providers
Families of 3 or more people under a plan.
Families
People between the ages of 25-65+ year old.
Individual Policy Buyers
Someone entrusted to care of a member, possibly a family member
Members’ Personal Representatives
Members under the age of 18 who are the dependents of other family members.
Dependents
Someone who is entrusted with the care of a member, possibly a family member.
Care Providers
Families of 3 or more people under a plan.
Families
The patient journey aligning with the business journey, challenges and the most important actions for the members.
Solution
006
We broke down our proposed solutions into different feature sets for the challenges identified. The goal was to envision end-to-end flow for the identified personas while breaking down the benefits and the value additions. These would help with paitent-feedback and bring value to the prioritization process for IBC.
Onboarding
Have a detailed breakdown of the terms, services, costs etc that he has to spend along with the different ways to use his health-insurance
Ways to integrate his insurance with his preferred technology devices
Usage
Expects to understand the terms & benefits of his plan. The plan should also articulate any changes to his plan, updates on bills and claims, as well suggest options to save additional money.
Retention
To ensure interaction and ease of access throughout the year, which will keep him at the top of his health and give him incentive to build a continuous care journey.
1
One stop destination for all personalized healthcare needs.
With my team, we developed the primary dashboard that offers real-time claim updates, personalized health tips, and easy access to policy details and digital ID cards. We solved problems by reducing administrative burdens, improving transparency on coverage and costs, and enhancing user engagement with actionable insights and reminders. This streamlined the very first step towards trust building with patients and fostered better health management.
The dashboard serves as a one-stop solution for a magnitude of patient needs.
The personalized health insurance dashboard featured customizable widgets that provide real-time claim updates, personalized health tips, and easy access to policy details and digital ID cards. We included detailed tools for preventative healthcare, allowing users to receive tailored reminders and recommendations.
View Details
Mr. Micheal Johnson
6363 0110 1234 1234 123
Premium Member
Pay Bill
To be paid by 03/26/2022
Outstanding Bill Amount
$ 108
Fitness first
Connected Device
Michelle’s Apple Watch, Series 7
9pm
9:30pm
10pm
72 bpm
144 bpm
92 bpm
View Details
Claims companion
Annual Health Check-up
Processed
25%
February 03, 2022
Documents Verified
View Details
Know More
Care Manager
Have you had your annual check up yet?
It seems like your annual check-up is pending.
Check today for member perks.
Dynapar 200
Connecting the Dots on Diabetes
1 nos.
Reminder
Article
2:30pm
Tools, support, clarity on your diabetes journey
The widgets offer cost tracking features, helping users understand their out-of-pocket expenses and benefits. Additionally, a provider finder tool enables users to locate in-network healthcare providers quickly. By focusing on personalization, we aimed to enhance user engagement and satisfaction, streamlining the experience and promoting proactive health management.
Dr. Willson Melo
Primary Care Provider
General Physician
Details
Your Health Checks:
Upcoming
Previous
Dental Health
Regular Glucose tests
Blood pressure and heart scans
February 02, 2022
January 07, 2022
December 27, 2021
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Provider Connect
2
Building agency with transparent claims, and upfront cost estimators.
The claims companion offers transparent communication on claim status and details, while the cost estimators provide clear, upfront information on potential expenses. Future planning enablement helped members with building agency and planning for their healthcare journeys upfront.
These tools educated members on their coverage and finacial responsibilities with quick call to actions for efficient decision making, enhancing transparency and empowering informed decision making.
3
Integrations with the healthcare ecosystem for optimizing member priorities.
These integrations solve problems such as fragmented healthcare data and lack of coordinated care by connecting various health services, providers, and insurance platforms. This feature enhances overall care coordination, improves health outcomes, and simplifies the user experience by consolidating essential health information in one place.
We focused on building the ability to co-brand, including dynamic content for client collaboration and integrations with third part vendors as well. Benefits for members include a seamless experience with synchronized medical records, streamlined communication between providers, and easier access to comprehensive care management tools.
Design details
007
A fIexible design system to make every touchpoint cohesive.
A lightweight design system framework tied everything together across brand and product. We focused on creating expandable templates & unique design themes for high priority clients that IBC had while maintaining a centralized library of components and styles to make every touchpoint feel like a IBC experience.
Collaborative design systems
Enhanced communication, and harnessed the collective intelligence of diverse teams, resulting in accelerated project timelines, higher quality outputs, and enriched user experiences.
Brand palette
Cultivated visual consistency, strengthened brand identity, and fostered memorable connections with audiences
Active imagery
Engaged audiences, conveying energy and dynamism, fostering emotional connections, and enhancing message resonance.
We focused on building the ability to co-brand, including dynamic content for client collaboration and integrations with third part vendors as well.
Impact
008
Co-ordinated business efforts for effective patient-centered experiences.
The team enhanced the overall patient experience, improved operational efficiency, and fostered a culture of empathy and user-centricity within the organization. These efforts resulted in measurable improvements in patient satisfaction scores, reduced wait times, and increased engagement with healthcare services. This initiative demonstrated the power of coordinated business efforts in driving meaningful, patient-centered design solutions.
Learnings
009
In a rapidly evolving business landscape, leveraging workshops, design thinking, and co-creation has become essential for driving innovation and achieving sustainable growth. Through strategic visioning, I learned the critical importance of future-proofing solutions, ensuring they are scalable and adaptable to technological advancements. Additionally, prioritizing features and defining scope through design activities ensured that the most impactful elements were developed first, aligning with both user needs and business goals. These experiences collectively underscored the significance of integrating long-term vision, agility, strategic feature prioritization, and user engagement in the pursuit of business success.
Future proof solutions through strategic visioning
Envisioning the future and preparing for scalability proved crucial. This experience taught me the value of integrating long-term thinking into design decisions, ensuring that solutions were not only effective in the present but also adaptable for future growth and technological advancements.
Quick turn around times
The necessity of quick turn-around times reinforced the importance of agility in the design process. By adopting agile methodologies and prioritizing rapid prototyping, I was able to deliver iterative updates and solutions swiftly, ensuring that the project stayed on track and met tight deadlines.
Building the importance of direct user connections
Establishing direct connections with users proved invaluable for the business to understand real needs and pain points. Facilitating user interviews, surveys, and usability testing sessions not only provided deep insights but also helped stakeholders appreciate the value of user-centered design. This approach bridged the gap between the business objectives and the actual user experiences, leading to more impactful solutions.
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