HealthPartners is a unique integrated insurance and healthcare organization which provides healthcare services as well as health plan financing and administration.
- Redesign the authenticated platform to help users find relevant information quickly and smoothly.
- Optimize the navigation to be more intuitive and straightforward inorder to enforce a clearer continuity between authenticated and public platforms.
As a lead designer on a high-profile project, I worked with executives from Directors to VPs.
- Led and collaborated with a team of 10 members.
- Conducted extensive user research, interviewing 40+ users and synthesizing findings to drive feature development.
- Streamlined and optimized user flows and navigation, achieving a 40% increase in task completion rate.
- Received personal recognition from the Senior Director of Web and Mobile in HealthPartner's internal monthly newsletter.
Led and collaborated with cross-functional teams to enhance HealthPartners' user experience. This project allowed me to explore the role of a product designer and understand the complexities of a large-scale project as I extended myself into other areas beyond my design role.
UX Audit and Insights
Initially, we conducted usability testing to understand users’ experiences while navigating our authenticated platform. By observing their actions, we identified pain points and areas for improvement in the navigation flow.
- Design: Users found the design cluttered and text-heavy, lacking hierarchy and organization. There was also a noticeable mismatch in design aesthetics between authenticated and public platforms.
- Terminology challenges: Users found the main menu terminology confusing and unrelated to common insurance and health terms, leading to inefficient navigation as they made inaccurate assumptions about the links they were clicking.
- Repetitive navigation: Repetitive content in primary and springboard navigation menus caused frustration, leading users to waste time believing they would find different sets of pages.
- Confusing navigation: Users were frustrated by the combination of public and authenticated navigation, as some links led to authenticated pages, while others led to public pages. This caused frustration when users sought essential health or insurance information.
- Transition between authenticated and public platforms: Lack of global navigation resulted in user frustration during transitions between public and authenticated platforms.
Business Goals and Objectives
Given the project’s high priority and strategic significance, we aimed to engage stakeholders early in the design phase. Our primary goal was to ensure alignment between business objectives and user goals, ultimately creating a valuable product for both the company and its users.
- Highlight services offered, such as Virtuwell, health programs, etc.
- Present information in a hierarchy that reflects user needs and site goals.
- Use everyday language (not jargon).
- Maintain better continuity between public and authenticated sites.
- Help consumers understand claims.
- Clarify plan coverage.
- Highlight plan benefits.
- Make it easier for users to figure out and anticipate costs.
- Provide a clear path to review recent care activity.
- Ensure that users can access all doctor profiles and easily make new appointments online to aid patient retention.
Target Audience
Members/Patients
This is the HealthPartners “sweet spot” and an opportunity to offer a differentiated experience for members who also see providers within the HealthPartners care group.
Members
This group includes current insurance plan members and their families. They are the largest audience with the highest number of active web accounts.
Patients
This group includes current patients and their families. Patients are the most active group as they have new activity appearing frequently on their authenticated sites.
Information Architecture
We decided to go back to the drawing board and started working on the navigation based on the feedback from the users. The most important goals for us to achieve were:
- User-Centric Approach: Based on the user feedback, we wanted put ourselves in users' shoes and understand the goals, needs and preferences of members and patients.
- Clear Labels: We wanted to ensure that primary and secondary navigation labels were concise, descriptive, and easy to understand. We avoided jargon or ambiguous terms as that had been one of the main painpoints for the old experience.
- Logical Grouping: We wanted to organize and group items logically based on function or relevance.
- Prioritization: We wanted to prioritize essential features that members and patients accessed most frequently, and keep those above the scroll line so they would be easily accessible.
Wireframes - Navigation Re-Design
Previous Navigation
New Navigation
Wireframes - Authenticated Platform
Given the scale of the project, there were several designers on the team. For the design itself, we aimed for consistency with the overall look of "Insurance" and "Clinic & Hospital" sections.
My focus was on some specific pages and features that are presented below.
Insurance
Problem:
"My Plan" terminology confused users as it didn't clearly relate to insurance. Additionally, the cluttered design and lack of hierarchy made accessing key insurance details difficult.
Solution
"My Plan" was renamed to "Insurance" to minimize unnecessary confusion.
The new card-based design presents complex information clearly, streamlines the "Plan Overview" page and makes insurance details more accessible, allowing users to quickly scan and act. The "I want to" dropdown on each card enhances usability by enabling direct actions and improving navigation.
Clinics and hospitals
Problem:
"My Care" terminology was confusing as users didn't expect it to contain information about their appointments. They also struggled to find and connect with their current providers as it was buried deep in the navigation.
Solution
The "My Care" section was renamed "Clinics & Hospitals" for clarity.
On the "Care Team" page, users now have easy access to their primary providers. The "I want to" navigation empowers users to make appointments, view profiles, or contact their providers, streamlining the process.
We also integrated Virtuwell, HealthPartners' popular 24/7 online clinic. Additionally, we listed the nearest in-network urgent care facilities based on location.
User interface design
One of the main goals while working on the UI design was to keep the design clean and simple without featuring any distracting elements. We created a consistent and coherent look and feel across our platform by using the same style, color, typography, and spacing for each card.
Insurance
Clinics and hospitals
Wireframes (Public Homepage)
While work was still ongoing on the authenticated platform, I shifted my attention to the public platform.
Problem:
Users didn't realize HealthPartners offered both healthcare services and health plan financing and administration. These unique features needed to be highlighted both separately and more clearly.
Solution
Two dedicated sections for "Insurance" and "Clinics & Hospitals" were added above the scroll line so they would be easily accessible to the user. Each section includes a list of highlighted services allowing users to discover the benefits of being both a member and a patient at HealthPartners.
User Interface Design (Public Homepage)
Feedback
We conducted another usability session to get feedback on the new and improved design. The feedback was as follows:
- Redesign reduced the clutter significantly.
- New navigation design, which included global navigation, elicited a very positive response. It helped users to focus on crucial aspects of the authenticated experience rather than getting lost on unrelated pages.
- Users also found it easier to to switch back and forth between the two experiences.
360 Encompass™ System Redesign
Simplified complex user journeys in an outdated interface. Implemented 10+ new features and a significantly enhanced user experience based on user testing results.
