Medicare Web Experience
Reimagining the digital learning, shopping, and enrollment experience to boost Medicare Advantage membership
Stakeholders
Medicare, Innovation, Consumer Experience, Enterprise Technology, Marketing, Digital
Areas
Experience Design, Innovation, Strategy
Challenge
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Becoming a new Medicare member and managing Medicare membership is a series of complex, confusing, overwhelming, and life-altering decisions.
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Our Omni experience is seen as less helpful relative to competitors for shopping & enrollment needs, resulting in the selection of other plans.
My Role
Research & Testing, Workshop Facilitation, Design
Project Status
Live (BCBSMA Medicare Website)
Our Innovation Process
Explore
Competitive Analysis
We conducted market landscape research to help us rapidly understand the current competitive market across national, local, industry, and non-industry trends and practices (good or bad). We can learn where we are positioned in the current market and identify what are the market needs.
We are doing so by identifying a sample of key players, competitors, or potential partners, in a specific sector or area, and classifying them accordingly by different factors and attributes.
We have gained the following Insights:
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Common features valued by consumers: Provider Coverage Tool, Drug Coverage Tool, Learning Center, Side-by-side Comparison, Plan Wizard, Live Chat, Modern & easy to use.
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They are widely implemented by our competitors, peer blue, start-ups/brokers, and vendors. They are essential to the modern, convenient, and effortless online shopping experience.
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We also identified multiple notable and innovative features that have the potential to improve shopper’s online shopping experience.
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Consumer Research
We conducted 10 one-on-one user interviews with open-ended questions. It helps us solve problems for other people by allowing us to see things from a user’s point of view.
We have gained the following Insights:
Providers, Drugs, & Costs
The most significant considerations influencing consumers' plan selection are:
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Coverage of current Primary Care Providers (PCPs) & other providers
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Coverage of current prescription medications
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Medical Spending
Overwhelming Information
Consumers are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information available to them. They face an incessant stream of choices, marketing materials, and intricate details that make it hard to compare plans. To make sense of this overwhelming information, they often seek help from experts like seminars and counselors, as the information is often presented in a confusing way.
Online vs. Human
Most consumers initially preferred learning, shopping, and enrolling online. However, due to outdated platforms and an unintuitive digital experience, many became overwhelmed and uncertain about selecting a plan. In such situations, they turned to humans for help via phone or in person (such as brokers, health plan representatives, etc.) to ask questions, validate their plan selection, or simply get assistance.
Friends, Family, & Brand Reputation
Beyond their PCP, medication coverage, and plan costs, consumers are heavily influenced by their friends and family as well as an insurer's brand reputation.
And we saw the oppotunities:
Providers, Drugs, & Costs
Prioritize features that enable consumers to conveniently check if their current providers and drugs are covered under the plan and assess their total costs.
Overwhelming Information
Ensure that information is easy to read, clearly differentiates between products, and allows for an easy "apples-to-apples" comparison across products.
Online vs. Human
Streamline the online experience and make human help more accessible to consumers who are confused and uncertain about their plan selection.
Friends, Family, & Brand Reputation
Consider incorporating testimonials and current members' opinions, and highlight quality ratings, industry awards, etc. to reinforce a strong brand reputation.
Explore
Building Empathy
Using consumer research and data, we identified that there were 4 targeted consumer groups. With that in mind, we constructed 4 personas to guide future-state work. (I had the opportunity to develop a new consumer persona template with best practices in mind, as the team did not have one.)
The 4 consumer groups are:
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Age-ins (turning 65), retaining from a BCBSMA Commercial plan to a BCBSMA Medicare plan.
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Age-ins (turning 65), attracting from a competitor’s Commercial Plan to a BCBSMA Medicare plan.
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Switchers, converting from a competitor’s Medicare Plan to a BCBSMA Medicare plan.
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Switchers, converting from an original Medicare Plan to a BCBSMA Medicare plan.
Then we developed the current-state journey, which is used to document current customer experiences based on known facts and data. This output is then used to inform the creation of a desired future-state journey.
With the research insights, we defined two “How Might We” statements to help us ideate solutions.
How might we create an engaging, simple learning experience that provides the necessary information and resources to maximize consumers’ understanding of plans?
How might we design an engaging and user-friendly shopping experience that offers consumers valuable guidance, clarity on available options, and a sense of assurance?
Shape
Design Thinking Workshop
We facilitated a two-day in-person Design Thinking Workshop where stakeholders engaged in collaborative ideation, future-state journey mapping, and prototype development.
Workshop in Action
Concept Ideation Activity
We rapidly developed conceptual wireframes and low-fi prototypes, so we could gather feedback from participants and conduct an initial round of user testing with potential users during the workshop.
Sample Learning Experience Prototypes from Workshop
We invited 4 consumers who fit each of our personas to the workshop to test our concepts and prototypes. We were able to receive some valuable insights from them:
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Desire simple plain language rather than industry jargon.
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Desire easier and cleaner navigation.
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Prefer younger-looking people in the website picture.
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Love the use of casual language.
Incubate
Scope & Focus
We defined our scope and focus for the minimal lovable product that consumers would love from the start.
Learning Experience
A centralized education hub that:
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Summarize important dates and things to consider
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Cuts through the jargon of terminology and plan types
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Provides videos and articles to suit consumers’ individual learning style(s)
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Provides the consumer with the knowledge necessary to confidently begin the shopping process
Shopping Experience
An engaging, simple, and reassuring shopping experience that:
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Provides a side-by-side plan comparison with the ability to focus on key benefits
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Eliminates visual clutter, prose text, etc.
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Continues to leverage and promote wizard tools, but realizes that confidence and assurance are built through comparison
Incubate
Hi-fi Conceptual Prototypes
Built upon the conceptual prototypes from the Design Thinking Workshop. I further fleshed out the design for the learning and shopping (the initial prototypes were started by another designer and I helped to further refine them after the workshop) experience.
Once we had developed sufficient high-fidelity prototypes, we shared them with the Consumer Experience team, who conducted user testing to gather feedback from consumers.
Homepage
Learning Experience
Shopping Experience
Delivery
Development & Implementation
We’ve developed a comprehensive Innovation Blueprint document that includes all the concept prototypes and capability recommendations. This document serves as a guiding tool for our cross-functional work groups, helping them develop and implement the solution effectively. We categorized capabilities into must-haves for the initial implementation and nice-to-haves for future continuous improvement.
By delivering high-fidelity conceptual prototypes to the UX team in the Digital group, we were able to further align and refine the prototypes for their final development.
Final Product
You can check out the live website here: BCBSMA Medicare Website
Delivery
Impact
We observed several positive indicators after deploying the newly revamped website.