Phoenix Health System Redesign

Software • White-label | Healthcare & Misc. Account Claims | Redesign + New Features

Project Overview

North Star

The Phoenix redesign project set out to eradicate the complexity and frustrations users had managing health claims and accounts. The project lasted 12 months from idea to release.

My Role

The most ambitious project of my career was also my first role as a lead. I was the researcher, designer and frontend developer in an aggressive project to clinch our $140 million acquisition.

To comply with non-disclosure agreements, I have omitted or obfuscated confidential information in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of Acclaris, Willis Towers Watson or its subsidiaries.

A Little Background

Research to Live in 8 months

High Level Goals and Success

New Features and Functionality

View why a claim is still pending
Take action to resolve pending claims
Submit a claim from anywhere on the site
View why a claim was denied on the application and take direct action to submit a new one
Upload receipts from your phone and create claims directly from your receipts

Holistic Improvements

Utilize a base framework to create a Design System Manager
Restructure the front-end architecture to utilize HTML5
Allow the application to resize for tablets and phones
Craft the new code to be WCAG / 508 Compliant

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Feature Upgrades

Submit New Claims

The crux of the project was making the claim submission process easier–visually, tactically and accessible anywhere! (Even mobile.)

Page timeouts due to the long claim form stopped people from submitting their claim and having to re-enter it, so I used a modal with 4 steps to prevent timeouts.

Due to non-disclosure agreements, I have omitted before-and-after images.

Solving Page Timeouts during Claim Submission Process

New FEature

New Receipt Features

We transformed frustration into delight while becoming one of the first platforms to allow organizing your receipts visually!

The solution was to implement a way to save the receipts immediately. What we did was add a new feature allowing you to take pictures of your receipts straight from your phone, uploading them directly to an existing claim or saving them to use for later!

Interviewing 10 users, I found that 6 out of 10 often lost the receipts before submitting the claim.

Drag & Drop Receipts

Create "stacks" and attach multiple receipts

Because multiple receipts are needed for a claim, we created a drag-and-drop feature to save multiple receipts into a "stack".

Adding Visuals

Visualizing Your Health Journey

Originally the app didn't contain any visuals to help the user see their habits or trends. We added visuals throughout the new application as we worked on crafting a system that helps users understand health accounts and how to maximize their use.

Reinforcing Positive Habits

HSA Account adoption was rising nationally year over year by about 13% on average in 2015. But I found we were seeing a drop-off in use or deposits to HSA accounts.

Previously, using our system had caused taxing anxiety, so I worked in a way to provide positive reinforcement through our visuals campaign through color palette (adding an uplifting green-yellow) and positive copy to help curb that anxiety.

Setting Up Continued Success

I found that our B2B customers were aggravated that setting up automatic deposits had been hidden in a settings page because confused users were inundating their support centers.

I devised a solution to place a very clear CTA within any page, and we opted to add a feature switch to allow turning the feature on or off per page, per B2C customer.

The Redesign

Overhauling the Dashboard

Claims are what 78% of users were coming to find–so we added the claim status front-and-center to our new Dashboard!

Adding Instant Direction to Resolving Issues

Not understanding why a claim is still open was one of the biggest frustrations for our users.

We added immediate feedback we didn’t have before to allow the user to know the immediate reason the claim was still open, and what action they needed to take (if any) to expedite the process!

Copywriting Phase

App verbiage and contextual messages

Messaging and copy was obtuse and aggravating

From the login page to the claims processing page, errors, account and claim copy were stuffed with health industry jargon such as "offset" and error messaging stating only: "An error occurred."

Obliterating the Power User Assumption

From the claims processing page to general account pages, our copy was stuffed with industry jargon our users didn't understand. I found my assumption was backed by the plethora of calls and tickets we received weekly, related to a lack of understanding around claim statuses and types.

In-App Messaging

From the login page to the claims processing page, error messages were mostly the same, simply stating: "An error occurred" with no context on how to fix the error, or why it occurred. Working with the data specialist, we combed through the back-end table of error messages to find there wasn't a single error that gave context to the problem and instructed users on how to fix it. We had to find a way to address this.

Handling Unexpected Scope

This was extreme scope creep for the project, and without a UX Copywriter, there wasn't any disagreement that normally I would have taken the reigns crafting new content. But my plate was full as it was, so Product and I struck a deal: If I could get it done in a day, I would write a guide for how new messages should be structured and I could hand off the content creation to our BA. During sprint demos, I would review the new messages.

Development used their unplanned capacity to introduce the new messaging, which was 50% completed by the launch of the first steps of the live redesign.