Around 65% of US adults get their health insurance through their employer. With average premiums at $8,500 for individuals and $24,000 for families - healthcare has a major impact on household budgets. Despite this enormous cost, the tools and information we all use to choose our health plans are woefully inadequate. Adding to the equation is the prevalence of new plan options such as supplemental insurance, disability coverage and health savings accounts - which all must be considered during a high-pressure open enrollment period.
Over 18 months we rolled out a series of design updates to the Maxwell member experience (a responsive website and an iOS app) to eventually arrive at a completely updated platform for members that we could be proud of. Prior to the update our NPS score was -30 and a full year after the redesign started it was a +39.
I was Director of UX and shared the work with two others on my team. Together we handled every part of the design process - planning, scoping, research, wireframes, prototypes, visual design, engineering hand-offs, QA and UAT. I lead design for the platform - did most of foundational wireframe work, some of the visual design and directed other team members or agencies, kept leadership aware of our vision, negotiated scope and timeline and took the blame when users were unhappy.
There was no single phase of research but two years of ongoing efforts to understand our users and how they experience our platform. During this time we conducted a variety of methods such as user testing, reviewed hundreds of support tickets, listened to training calls, round-table discussions with the support team and close monitoring of multiple NPS studies. At one point me and my team actually fielded support calls to gain empathy for our members.
Over this time we learned a lot, some highlights include:
I love this part of the process, Unencumbered by design systems, templates or often technical scope - I explore the sequence and makeup of screen content and interactions so we are getting users to accomplish the steps needed - but in a way that makes sense according to how they see the world.
I experimented a lot in this phase with how we could order the steps, explain concepts, nudge users to take actions, and encourage them. We also tried very hard to treat benefits like a shopping experience - which we hoped would be familiar and comforting to users (later on we abandoned some of the shopping conventions).
As the vision for the new member experience began to take shape - I shared it with leadership and technical leads. With strong consensus that we are heading in the right direction, we started user testing and refine the interactions . We also agreed on an release plan that prioritized the most fragile technical areas. This meant we would focus on certain screens initially and then slowly expand to impact more of the experience.
Even though design wasn't finished we began to make no-regret decisions on scope and hand-off wireframes to engineering so they could begin working on any necessary back-end and middle-layer technology. If any front-end was needed for engineering - they based it on the wireframes.
The Maxwell brand was visually distinct and friendly but its expressions were limited mostly to marketing and PR. I saw a lot of opportunity to take it further in the product experience. We needed to develop a more nuanced look for Maxwell and stretch the brand's visualizations to include some new forms of illustrations and flourishes. The new app also needed a stronger voice since the wireframes worked hard to connect with users through language - in the form of guidance, nudges and education. The new approach also relied on some more careful pacing and visual feedback so users would be better aware of what they did, where they were in the process and more confident in each step.
I pulled in some outside help from to take my wireframes and the brand and discover some new ways to bring it all to life through color, UI components and copy. Together we came up with an illustration style, color palette, typography and icon style.
Using the final mockups from the design agency we developed a style guide and template library. These were both put into Sketch as a share component library and then also connected with Zeplin which was our tool of choice at the time for hand-offs to engineering.
Once these were set up we were able to quickly roll through all the key screens for the initial release and update them with the final designs and artwork.
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