Healthcare.gov
2012-2017
The Healthcare.gov website is the home of the Federal Health Insurance Marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) operated by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
I was the product owner for the "frontend"/user interface especially focusing on login, application, plan shopping, and enrollment working with IDEO, Ed Mullen, and several designer teams. Basically, I made sure my policy team’s business rules were reflected on the website. It was my first exposure to design thinking with IDEO (a design firm) which began my fascination with experience design.
The project was utterly complex with multiple stakeholders including federal agencies, states, advocacy groups, legislators, White House, leaderships, technology folks, and policymakers. Throughout it all, it's really important to remember the main beneficiary - the people who need health insurance for their families - 20 M signed up in the first few months.
Healthcare.gov concept map - a guiding principle for the online insurance shopping experience
Why did we do this?
45 M Americans uninsured in 2010 then 27.5 M in 2020
16.4% uninsured to 8.6% in 2016 now 10.9%
38% = Hispanics
28% = Young adults (Invincibles)
29% = Low-income
We designed and built Obamacare programs as well as Healthcare.gov around these three main groups allowing everyone to use them.
Who built It?
The Affordable Care Act implementation was a sprawling effort led by the core team at the White House. I was part of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO under Center for Medicare & Medicare Services) who were the business owners. I represented the policy experts in ensuring that the designers and engineers followed the rules but at the same time, the consumer experience be excellent.
Participatory Activity
Filling out paper insurance applications
The "eureka" moment came when IDEO and I watched our target folks struggle to fill paper forms especially complicated language and many fields not related to their situation. We streamlined the application and created a card approach for people to fill out online.
What did we do?
User Stories
User Research
Empathy Interviews with Target groups
Journey Mapping/Personas
Ideation
Hi-Fi Wireframes
User Stories
Team lead - Agile Sessions
As the product owner for the policy team, I led teams of designers, engineers, and policy experts to write user stories, design navigation maps, and ensure the website interactive experience reflected the business rules.
