Bringing transparency to healthcare
As a Senior Product Designer on the Growth team at Oscar, I helped build tools for individuals, businesses and brokers to quote and enroll in health insurance.
CHALLENGE
Four product teams have under invested in strategy and staffing. As a fast pace high growth startup there is a lack of product insights and understanding of our users.
SOLUTION
With discovery research, team building workshops and process experimentation, set a vision for Growth across our organization while quickly launching guided, trustworthy user experiences.
ROLE & DURATION
Lead Sr. Product Designer, Researcher
2 week sprints, 1 year, 30+ launches
CONSTRAINTS & TEAM
Stakeholder & Leadership Buy-In
Security & Nationwide Compliance
Peers: 1 Visual Designer, 1 DS, 4 PMMs, 4 PMs, 4 Engineering Teams
Reports: 1 Designer
What attitudes and mental models do people have when shopping for health insurance?
DISCOVERY
When first joining the team, I put together a research plan for 20 interviews with Oscar members and non-members who had recently gone through the experience of shopping for health insurance. For many, shopping for health insurance is something they dread every year.
We synthesized the results with key members of product, marketing, sales and engineering in an interactive persona workshop.
“This is the first time I connected that the back-end code I work on actually results in someone getting their health insurance card.”
- Engineer
PERSONAS
While it’s difficult to design a solution for every demographic (as everyone needs healthcare), our personas helped us focus on the key problems and mindsets that united our members.
DESIGN SPRINT
In a Design Sprint workshop, we uncovered that while not our primary conversion channel (most enroll through healthcare.gov), our website is a significant touchpoint on the purchasing journey. It holds opportunity to better communicate Oscar’s values and build consumer trust. .
HMW rebuild this experience with maximum impact, for the lowest cost?
GATHERING REQUIREMENTS
We lacked a product manager at the start of the project. I worked with my engineers and stakeholders to gain an understanding of our technical, legal requirements and business goals. Much of this had historically gone undocumented, so we took the opportunity to re-inventory what was truly necessary, and what could be removed to increase simplicity.
What are industry standards? What are opportunities for differentiation?
LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS, SKETCHING & LOWFI WIREFRAMES
The existing experience had problems with accessibility, scalability and discoverability. Our MVP would leverage best UX practices, while providing the foundation for improved guidance and education for the complexity of healthcare.
Validation at each key milestone
USABILITY TESTING & ITERATION
Synthesis workshops with my pods and stakeholders gave everyone had a chance to hear from our members. Simple decks highlight hypotheses, testing versions, findings and recommendations, so that we could look back and remember our decisions at each key phase of the redesign.
Let’s build for measurability
LAUNCH
Our MVP launched this open enrollment in November of 2019. The redesign was built with tracking in mind, so that we could better understand our members and identify future levers for growth.
Connecting growth channels
STRATEGY
This work was also completed in tandem to the launch of over 20 features in our B2B growth channels: the Oscar Broker Portal (for brokers) and the Oscar Business Portal (for employers). As the designer who bridged these teams, I worked to share insights; lead ideation and collaboration across pods. This contributed to a more holistic experience that followed the end-to-end user journey.
Results
IMPACT
Healthcare is a dated industry filled with legacy systems and archaic technology. Oscar was founded to disrupt that history. With clear, transparent tools, we believe technology can be used to lower healthcare costs and drive better health outcomes.