Fortune 500 Health Insurance Company
In an effort to increase value-based outcomes for members and compete in a growing and competitive healthcare market, a Fortune 500 Healthcare company sought to create a supplement insurance product by employing Human-Centered Design (HCD) and Agile methodologies. For this particular initiative, we led multi-disciplinary teams through design thinking methods in order to determine the viability and member interest in the individual product features.
My role as UX Designer on a two-person team was to partner up as User Researcher, Designer, and Facilitator. The duration of this project was eight weeks.
Note: Images have been blurred to protect intellectual property of the client.
Methods
Research plan
37 stakeholder interviews
26 design thinking and focus group workshops
Competitive analysis
Journey mapping
Deliverables
Impact map
Value proposition
Journey maps
Service blueprints
6 ideation concepts
Research report
Problem Framing
Problem Statement and Impact Map
The client came to us with a basic business concept for a new product that would make them more competitive in the commercial health insurance market. We worked with stakeholders to clearly sculpt a problem statement so we knew exactly what we were solving for and then identified who would would be affected and to what degree.
Ideation
Design THinking Workshops
We started by engaging key stakeholders representing each of the groups identified int he impact map in a series of design thinking workshops. Our process involved broadly constructing “how might we?” statements then affinity mapping the ideas with participants. In another session we led our stakeholders through dot voting exercise. The ideas that were voted as being the most critical were then plotted on in impact and difficulty matrix to prioritize critical components for our initial MVP release.
Once we had our features prioritized we worked alongside our subject matter experts to create 6 concept posters. These were used to visualize exactly what these features and solutions would look like in a successful implementation of the product.
Service Blueprints
We were able to piece together the detailed concepts from the design thinking sessions to create service blueprints. The image to the left is just one from a series of several service blueprints we created to visualize the process in every scenario a member may encounter with this product. This allowed the team to visualize who will be involved and in what role, and where the MVP features are to be introduced in the process.
Concept Testing
Focus Groups
We conducted a series of focus groups as an opportunity to get member feedback on the preliminary plan for the product. The insights generated were instrumental in our development recommendations. We found that due to underlying issues in trust between members and insurance companies in general some steps in the process were not seen as favorable, despite the intention.
Reflections and Next Steps
This project was a fantastic example of why it is critical to engage the users at every point in product development. Though the intentions of the product were altruistic and ultimately positive for everyone involved - lower cost, high quality care through personalized case management - through focus groups we were able to identify design features that would negatively impact value actualization.
We were able to provide the client with concrete recommendations to improve the product before release, saving them an estimated 720 million dollars. Most importantly though, I think we uncovered a larger issue of mistrust among members and for profit insurance companies. There is a huge opportunity to change the landscape of healthcare and gain the trust of members who often have no say in who their insurer is.