How to Creatively Bring Ideas to Life and Validate Business Objectives

A health insurance company wanted to improve the interface their employees use to refer providers to members. We ideated solutions and tested them on users to gather feedback. As a result of our work, the client team was able to secure the necessary funding from their directors to implement the new and improved experience.

Project Overview

The Product

The product is an internal website designed for customer service reps and care team employees at a health insurance company. It assists them in identifying providers to recommend to their customers.

The Team

I led a team consisting of two designers and one product manager. Together, we collaborated with two internal client stakeholders and subsequently presented our findings to their directors upon completion of the project.

My Role

As the principal strategist, I facilitated the requirements gathering workshops, supervised the production work of the two designers, conducted the user testing sessions, and led the synthesize of the research findings.

Understanding the Product's Vision

To start the project, I led a V2MOM workshop as it serves as an effective framework for defining the product's strategy. The primary objective was to grasp the client's desired outcomes so that our designs could align with their vision.

Through this workshop, we identified the following business objectives for the product:

Improve Health Outcomes for Members
Engage and Empower Clinical and Service Teams
Improve the Member's Customer Service Experience
Improve Productivity and Reduce Costs

V2MOM is a framework created by Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce, to help define a product's strategy.

Gather Requirements and Map the Existing User Journeys

Once we grasped the product's purpose, our next step was to acquire a better understanding of the users and their context of use. The product had three user groups, all of whom had the shared goal of identifying providers to recommend, but each had distinct reasons for doing so. I conducted a workshop with the client to map out the three user journeys. As the client had already conducted some prior testing with users, they were able to provide us with known pain points for the experience.

Through these workshops, we identified a few opportunity areas for the existing experience:

Users lacked an effective way to share recommendations with a member.
The current experience did not provide users with the ability to search for providers in the manner they desired.
Given that these users spend the majority of their day working with outdated software that features complex interfaces, we have an opportunity to position ourselves as their preferred tool by creating a simpler, cleaner, and more user-friendly experience.

I conducted process mapping workshops with the client and then translated our learnings into profiles and journeys. We used these journeys to evaluate our designs and make sure we were accounting for all the different use cases and solving known pain points.

Explore Design Concepts

Armed with the knowledge we'd learned during the V2MOM and user journey workshops, my team embarked on an exploratory search of analogous designs in other industries to generate ideas. Our goal was to broaden our thinking and derive innovative ideas beyond the conventional provider search.

To enhance the "provider sharing" experience, we drew inspiration from ecommerce patterns like compare, wishlist, and social sharing. We found the act of identifying providers to recommend similar to adding items to a wishlist or to a compare drawer. This prompted us to devise a curation feature where members could select providers they're thinking of recommending and then choose which ones to share via email.

To refine the search experience, we researched how people search for and find results in other services or experiences, such as dog walkers, cooking classes, restaurants, or apartments. The findings inspired us to redesign the layout of the results page.

We also explored different search experiences and ideated on what users need to see right when they open the tool. Leveraging the opportunity to simplify the interface, we derived inspiration from Google's homepage and decided the landing page should be a single search field inviting users to begin typing.

After we understood the requirements, we visualize the designs via sketching and debated what ideas best solved our problems.

Identify the User Flows and Create a Prototype

After aligning with the client on the product's general direction via sketches, my team started wireframing and creating UI mockups. I conducted daily critiques with them to ensure that their designs aligned with the product vision.

We held meetings with the client to review the screens and incorporated any feedback they provided. They acted as proxies for the users, ensuring we covered all the use cases in our designs.

During these reviews, we identified areas where we were uncertain about the design direction. We documented these uncertainties so we could address them during user testing sessions.

Throughout the project, we kept iterating on the design to bring it to higher fidelity. I had one designer create wireframes while the other designer established the styling. This way, we kept thinking through the interactions without waiting for the styling to be solidified.

Test and Evaluate the Design Solution

To conduct our testing, we collaborated with the client to recruit a few employees from each of the three user groups. Over the course of a week, we conducted the testing sessions and synthesized our findings.

The primary goal of the testing sessions were to assess how quickly and easily the user groups could perform their job using our design. I moderated each of the sessions remotely, then I led the team in synthesizing the findings.

Through our analysis, we identified parts of the design that performed well and areas that still needed improvement. Notably, we found that the scaled back interface provided the breath of fresh air we were hoping for.

Improvements Made Due to Testing

Reworked the Share Interaction

Users loved the new way they could share recommendations, but they were initially confused about how to initiate the process. Rather than using the term "share," they described it as "sending" recommendations to the members. Additionally, we learned that users often shared multiple providers at once. To address these findings, we updated the design to highlight the ability to select multiple providers and adjusted the call-to-action accordingly.

Share feature before (left) and after (right)

Saved an Expensive Feature for a Future Release

Initially, the client believed an automated email or text message would be the best way to share recommendations with members. However, our testing revealed otherwise. They were already emailing the member outside the tool, and they had a lackluster reaction to the text message feature. What they really loved was the ability to "copy to clipboard" because it would speed up their documentation process.

Share options modal before (left) and after (right)

Identified A Better Search Experience

To cater to multiple user search preferences, we initially presented both search options. However, we discovered that some users were unfamiliar with procedure codes, yet attempted to search using them, potentially leading to inaccurate search outcomes. To address this, we modified the search question to a radio button, allowing users to skip the procedure code search if needed.

Search selection before (left) and after (right)

Demonstrate the Design Has Value

After completing all the necessary edits based on user testing, we proceeded to present the final solution to our client's executives. The success of the project depended on their buy-in, as they needed to secure funding to build out the tool. To make a strong case, we organized our presentation around the business objectives and value drivers that were identified during the project. This approach allowed us to connect each design decision to its corresponding business objective and demonstrate how the overall design achieved those goals.

This is an example of one of the sides that discussed how the tool's design feed into a value driver, which then feed into one of their business objectives.

Project Outcome

The client and executives were extremely pleased with our work. Following the presentation, they requested a proposal from us to build out the tool, as they enjoyed working with us so much.

"We are over the moon happy with the work your team has done. This engagement has gone more smoothly than any digital initiative I have been apart of."
- Client Feedback