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Enhancing the experience and efficiency of member premium payments.
Context & background
Project overview
The Premium Payments project is part of a broader enterprise initiative to enhance the consumer experience at UHC, tackling challenges in payments and reimbursements and unifying experiences across all lines of business.
While the initiative covers multiple aspects, this case study specifically focuses on premium payments.
My role
As the design lead, I managed UX for three business lines with premium payment capabilities across web and native apps. We tackled each business segment individually, navigating varied timelines and scope challenges.
My goal was to foster informed decision-making by ensuring our team and partners fully understood the problem space before developing solutions. Here’s a summary of the design strategy, leadership and process I employed.
UX vision
Provide a reliable and easy to use premium payment experience that helps members achieve a sense of control and understanding when managing their health care costs.
Discovery and research
Initially, we set broad learning objectives to understand who our users are and their pain-points, identify gaps and opportunities and analyze impacts to our customer support teams.
We employed an experience blueprint and user story map as our primary vehicle for data visualization, empathy building, prioritization and alignment.
Mapping objectives to the right methods.
We employed a mixed methods approach throughout the process to tailor our research to specific learning objectives.
Generative methods created new insights through user research and stakeholder interviews, while comparative analysis, contextual inquiry, and collaborative design sessions fostered alignment.
Evaluative research encompassed data analysis, heuristic evaluation, design audits, concept testing and usability testing to gauge solution effectiveness across various dimensions.
Findings from an opportunity-rich discovery phase
Unclear status results in duplicate payments.
Confusing cost breakdown and lack of subsidy information.
Complex AutoPay setup yields inconsistent outcomes.
Absence of common payments features like saving methods, scheduling and split payments.
Frequent system downtime triggers support calls.
Technology and tools are siloed which prolong support times, impact data accuracy and latency, require manual intervention and higher margins of error.
Significant differences across all payment experiences within the organization.
Best-in-class benchmarks are non-existent with healthcare payments today.
Notifications and messaging are often complicated, robust and lacking in detail and channel preferences.
Needs and Goals
A clear and focused set of goals to support user needs and business objectives.
User need 1
Improve convenience and flexibility of online payments
Business Goal: Increase digital self-service of premium payments and increase utilization of AutoPay
Key Measurement: Decrease in IVR and customer support payments and increase in active AutoPay accounts
User need 2
Increase access and understanding of premium details and status
Business Goal: Reduce calls regarding payment status and billing questions
Key Measurement: Decrease in premium payment support calls
User need 3
Improve notifications of upcoming and past due balances
Business Goal: Reduce canceled policies due to non-payment
Key Measurement: Decrease in number of delinquent policies
Strategy
Through a continuous cadence of discovery and design, we’d craft a pathway for an enhanced consumer payments experience using these ten areas as our focus.
Clear cost breakdown: Provide comprehensive details regarding the premium balance and subsidy calculation as well as access to billing statements and payment history.
Streamline checkout: Implement a one-page checkout, optimizing page architecture and flow to increase usability and task completion.
Simplify AutoPay: Implement a straightforward Autopay approach to boost utilization, prioritizing it as a key business focus for adoption.
Expand payment features: Offer features tailored to convenience and flexibility, such as saved payment methods, split payments and text-to-pay.
Contextual support options: embed digital issue resolution options such as a chatbot or live chat that come at a much lower cost than calling.
Improve communications and broaden digital channel offerings: Expand and unify omni-channel communication and address communication gaps.
Responsive design: Ensure the website is fully functional and visually appealing on all devices.
Accessibility: Implement WCAG AA standards and ensure compatibility with screen readers.
Ensure operational readiness: Embed the operations and customer support teams into the process, so they can be equipped to support new consumer features/experiences.
Payments UX toolkit: Develop common design patterns, usage documentation and content guidelines for scaling payments experiences across the organization.
Leadership
A project of this magnitude can surface many unique obstacles and situations. Here are some principles as a UX leader that I consistently leaned into.
Empower through collaboration: Promote teamwork, trust, shared goals and diverse perspectives with cross-functional partners.
Stay dedicated on our objectives: Reframe problems and reset ourselves to our aligned user and business goals.
Advocate for a user-centered vision: Emphasize user research to drive effective solutions and replace unverified assumptions.
Embracing change and iteration: Balance creativity and constraints while adopting a "progress over perfection" mindset.
Champion great design practices: Ensure design workflow efficiencies and best practices are implemented and identifying team up-skill opportunities.
Be radically transparency and open-minded: Commitment to being open and honest, vulnerable and full of humility when navigating the good, bad and uncertainty.
UX Design execution
When it came to the design execution phase of our work, there was no reason to reinvent the wheel with a new design process. At this point we’ve planned our work and now it was time to work our plan.
Ideate
Facilitated design sessions to brainstorm solutions based on research and strategy and explored ways to streamline navigation and reduce friction in checkout.
Design
Helped the design team iterate and refine our ideas from concept to detailed design using our enterprise design system, while partnering with product and engineering on requirements.
Test
Orchestrated the scope and planning of our usability tests with our research partners, then prioritizing feedback with the team and ensuring usability and accessibility standards are met.
Implement
Engaged our engineering team to build shared goals and processes for hand-off, while supporting the team’s execution of the end-to-end solution, documentation and eventual QA processes.
Key web responsive screens included in the initial release.
The output of the design team’s process and hard-work go deep below the surface of these screens. The team did an incredible job executing while working at times with limited resources, navigating a new design system, constant change and uncertainty.
Payments landing
Clear cost breakdown
One-page bill pay flow
Payment confirmation and receipt
Access & download payment and billing details
Payment method management
Autopay active
Autopay confirmation and receipt
Web responsive design for L/XL displays
Now, Next, Later was used to divide our solution into meaningful phases for the business and delivery.
Now (current platform improvements in 2022): AutoPay enhancements, Payment method saving and Messaging for fully subsidized members.
Next (platform migration): cost breakdown and subsidies, real-time payment status, streamlined checkout/bill pay, improved confirmation and receipt, enhanced billing and payment history, multiple payment methods saving, wallet management during checkout or via My Account, refined email notifications and system alerts, synchronized checkout experiences (Guest, Onboarding and Authenticated) and transition to new web design system.
Later (expand and iterate): Text-to-Pay feature, integrated native app experience, live chat support, payments UX toolkit and enhanced communication channel options.
Solution Impact
Outcomes from the “Now” work we delivered in 2022:
18% increase in AutoPay utilization (to nearly 67%)
25% increase in utilization of Saved Payment Methods (to nearly 60%)
16-point YoY increase in NPS related to payment processes
11-point increase to 53% YoY in Ease of Use
I left the team before reaching the 'Next' phase, but we achieved several strategic milestones that will drive long-term success and positive member outcomes:
Created a consistent, scalable design for payments with flexibility for business needs.
Ownership of UX design for organization-wide premium and claim payments
Aligned design team to UHC's mobile-first approach.
Integrated operations and support teams for new consumer experience support.
Implemented the enterprise design system into our workflow and product roadmap.
In retrospect
Changing timelines and requirements were a constant certainty, as were limited development and engineering resources. Maintaining team motivation and energy proved demanding. Despite the hurdles, keeping an open line of communication helped us persevere and build sustaining connection and trust as a team.
While incremental delivery is apart of the longer-term strategy, we understand the constraints and the sheer number and size of the decisions that come with transitioning to an entirely new platform at the enterprise. We're dedicated to refining this approach given its substantial impact to the organization and for the members.
Looking ahead, our aspiration persists: extending this experience to diverse segments and transactions, such as claim payments, rewards, reimbursements and pharmacy/Rx. The journey continues, enriched by lessons and motivation to drive our vision forward.
As a leader, I've come to appreciate the balance between keeping a pulse on the everyday work and strategic management. It's a dynamic mix that necessitates trial and error, a growth mindset and self-compassion.