MyHumana First Experience
MyHumana is Humana’s secure website for member information. For many members the site is the primary point of interaction with their health insurance. They use the site when they need to understand their healthcare benefits, check the status of claims, see progress towards meeting deductibles, and to access a wide range of other personal plan and account information.
The Challenge
- MyHumana was very slow and the site was vulnerable to outages
- The user experience was complicated and the information provided wasn’t prioritized or personalized
- Members found it difficult to accomplish their goals
The Process
- 2 week Discovery & Framing process to understand the problem
- Collaborative design studio exercise to identify possible solutions
- An iterative cycle of design, prototyping, and user research
My Role
- Led discovery process and facilitated cross-disciplinary generative design exercises
- User experience design
- Visual and interface design
- Prototyping
- Usability research
The Challenge
Logging in to MyHumana was very slow and the site was vulnerable to outages. Once logged in the user experience was complicated and the information provided wasn’t prioritized or personalized. Important information was often several clicks away - members could eventually accomplish their goals but often found it difficult. This experience created a negative impression and reputation for Humana.
The challenge was both technical and experiential. Our team needed to improve the speed and reliability of the site while also creating a more intuitive and useful experience for our members once they logged into their account. At Humana’s Digital Experience Center we work in balanced teams of Software Engineers, Product Managers, and Product Designers. This collaborative structure allowed our team to tackle both challenges simultaneously with the experience design taking advantage of the technological solution as it developed.
Process
Discovery & Framing
A collaborative process to quickly explore the problem and identify potential solutions
We started our process with a discovery and framing exercise. Discovery and framing is a collaborative process that quickly explores a problem and identifies a potential solution. The process is designed to ensure that the highest priority problems are being addressed first and the proposed solution will maximize user value and ROI.
Diverse Stakeholders
MyHumana serves many members and is home to information that originates from all over the company. This makes it a high profile product with a diverse group of stakeholders. To make sure we understood the technological and business problems we began the discovery and framing process by talking with subject matter experts and interviewing stakeholders.
Diverse members
Another challenge was understanding our diverse group of members and how they used the wide range of insurance products serviced through MyHumana. Often, the easiest path to understanding people is to simply talk with them. At the Digital Experience Center, user research is a fundamental part of our design process. At the earliest stages these conversations with our users help us clearly define the problems and product goals.
Participants in the design studio pitch ideas and critique each other's solutions.
Design Studio
A fast-paced, collaborative exercise to quickly generate ideas.
To facilitate our human-centered approach to software our goal is to begin learning from our users as quickly as possible. As part of the discovery process we used the design studio method to explore a wide range of possible experiences. A design studio is a fast-paced, collaborative way to generate many ideas quickly through sketching, iteration, and critique. In addition to our core team we included a diverse group of internal stakeholders with representatives from technology, business, and design.
A place to begin testing and learning
The design studio helped us get to a tangible experience quickly. The sketched designs were translated into simple working prototypes that were then used for our first round of usability testing. This initial user feedback helped us to refine our solution and finish the discovery and framing feeling confident about where we would start developing the product.
An iterative process
Usability research is the centerpiece of our design practice.
As our design team is defining the interface and visual design we are also leading the research that informs the design and influences product decisions. During the MyHumana engagement the product design was shaped through a cycle of weekly usability testing and direct conversations with more than 100 members. Humana’s membership is a large and diverse group and this ongoing research was invaluable in understanding our users and what they needed to know about their health insurance.
The product design team works collaboratively to explore user needs and problems.
“It’s clear you all have done your research, and it’s obviously important to Humana that I’m able to find the information I’m looking for!”
Humana Medicare Member
“It’s relatively easy for someone who doesn’t spend a lot of time on the computer.”
Humana Medicare Member
Solution and Impact
Technological improvements combined with the ongoing conversations with members helped our team create significant improvements to the experience design.
Technical improvements
- The speed of logging in was made 3 times faster, reduced from over 15 to under 5 seconds.
- A micro-services architecture was a part of the technical solution to increasing the speed and resiliency of the site.
- The experience design was able to take advantage of this more efficient architecture to display 3 times the amount of information than the previous MyHumana landing page.
Experience improvements
- In addition to an increased quantity of user data we were also able to provide a higher quality of information.
- We implemented a modular design that provides a personalized experience for each user, showing only information that is applicable and relevant to that person.
- Information is presented consistently across all products (medical, dental, pharmacy, etc.) so that members can find what they need when they need it.
We learned that age wasn’t necessarily a predictor of mobile device usage and that even it wasn’t a member's preferred device they often need insurance information while on the go. Working in a mobile first design philosophy we could ensure members had a quality experience no matter where or when they were accessing the site.
Ongoing development
Empowering our partners for continued progress
The Digital Experience Center is Humana’s software incubator and accelerator. To serve that role our teams aren’t the longterm owners of any of the products we develop. To help distribute the product knowledge and facilitate the the longterm success of our products we work directly with the teams that will be responsible for the product when the initial engagement ends. The software engineers, designers, and often product managers work in pairs with our partners as the product is developed. Working together so closely with our partners helps ensure the product can continue to be designed and developed without creating a gap in knowledge. The ongoing development of the MyHumana experience is enabled by automated testing and a low-risk roll-out process established during our engagement.The human-centered approach to design also continues to shape the experience as new features are added.