Secondary Research

Our goal for our secondary research was to look into the following:

• Understand what Medicare and Medicare Advantage are respectively
• Learn more about our user groups and their habits of using mobile applications
• Understand the workflow of signing up for Medicare

From this research, we learned that Medicare Advantage is an alternative to the Original Medicare plan. They are contracted through insurance companies, rather than directly with the government. They not only have what Original Medicare has, which is part A and part B, but also covers part D usually. Most Medicare Advantage plans cover other benefits that the Original Medicare plan does not have, such as vision, hearing, and dental. We found two apps that are designed specifically for seniors, targeting people who are 50 years old or more: SilverSingles and Lumen. SilverSingles and Lumen are dating apps for senior singles. Based on the visuals, they did a good job by not overlaying texts on images, using an easy-to-read font, and high contrast.

We learned that 79% of people between 50 and 64 years old have a smartphone. They spend approximately 55.6 hours on their phones per week. The most frequent apps they use are Email apps, Internet browser apps, and Weather apps. Their biggest concern is about privacy and security. Lastly, we learned that signing up for Medicare is convenient and can be done online, but the critical issue understanding all the complex plans offered.

Primary Research

Seniors Signing Up

Medicare Specialists

Since our users will have different needs and experience different frustrations at different stages of Medicare, we decided to talk to people who already signed up and people who are currently in the process of signing up. We also talked to people who are helping our target users in signing up for Medicare, such as officers working in the Social Security Office and a Medicare Specialist from the State Health Insurance Assistance Program. In total, we interviewed 9 people.

From these interviews, we gained the following insights:

• The root problem was that the information was not presented in a clear structure to the users. People are overwhelmed with information about Medicare. Some of the advertisements from commercial companies contain misleading information. People are still confused about what they signed up for as a Medicare plan after they have gone through the process.
• The second problem was that the Medicare plan is highly associated with people’s own experience. The suggestions and selections vary as the individual's needs are not the same.
  
• The third problem was about lacking empathy. People experience a feeling of getting old during this time when they start to think about Medicare. People prefer to have someone to help them answer the questions when they make decisions on which plan to choose from.
  

Persona

After conducting interviews, we wanted to translate our research and interview findings into a persona in order to think more closely through our user’s needs. Because there are a lot of different solutions that would lead people to choose different Medicare plans, we wanted to delve deeper into a few situations to understand how a certain persona’s needs would influence their Medicare choice. We based our persona on our interviews and research takeaways, where we found the most common case: users who are signing up for the first time. Wilma was our persona for users who are signing up for the first time.

Besides this common case, we wanted to explore how certain health conditions, financial status, and previous jobs influenced what Medicare plan our users end up choosing. Wilma was transferring health insurance from her private law firm position that she had just retired from, and needed coverage for her husband’s blood pressure meds and her arthritis. She is very well off and wants the plan with the best benefits and similar coverage to what she has currently. Wilma’s main goal is to get a similar coverage to her previous plan.

Takeaways:

• Health conditions, financial status and previous job influence user needs and the Medicare plan that makes the most sense them.
  
• The main goals of the user for what they want to get out of their Medicare plan usually closely align with one plan or another. For example, if the goal is to have the cheapest plan or a certain prescription covered, this changes which plan makes sense for them.
  
• There are many factors that influence how the users get information. Our persona Wilma is the oldest of her friend group and didn’t get any information from her friends, which meant she relied on phone calls and internet searches for information
  

Ideation

Sketching: As a team, we sketched on the beginning of what the app may include. We ideated on initial onboarding and intro questions, plan narrowing, plan information pages, navigation and more. We did a round robin activity where we built off each other’s sketches and we did a long sketching activity to flush out more features and app flows. After we sketched a good amount, we translated those sketches into lo-fidelity prototypes.

Lo-Fidelity Prototypes: For our first round of lo-fi prototyping, we did a frankensketch activity. We broke the team into 2 teams and talked through the sketches from the previous round of sketching, identifying the best parts of each person’s design. We ideated on the categories of onboarding, plan recommendation, navigation, information and filtering. We then combined those features into 2 prototypes. Then, in the same teams, teammates discussed the insights from the research analysis and brainstormed how they could be incorporated into our current lo-fi prototype.

Mid-Fidelity Prototypes: In our mid-fi stage, we did 3 rounds of iterations before moving to hi-fidelity prototypes. The rounds were: Applying Research and Testing Takeaways, Combining Prototype and Flow for Testing. We applied our guerilla testing takeaways to our updated prototype and also revisited our research to see what changes we could make from the research we did.

Lo-Fi: Recommended Plans and Individual Plan Page

Mid-Fi: Recommended Plans and Individual Plan Page

Lo-Fi: Navigation System

Mid-Fi: Navigation System

Testing

In order to test our designs, we did 2 rounds of testing. We conducted guerilla testing after creating our lo-fidelity prototypes and conducted usability testing after both our mid-fis and hi-fis.

We defined guerilla testing as finding participants who have never seen the prototypes, and seeing how they interact and understand the user flow shown to them. Each member was to take notes on sticking points, pain points, and obstacles encountered, and also have the participant talk out loud about what they are thinking as they go through the models. Our goal with guerilla testing was to see how users understood the entry to the app because there were multiple flows we had ideated on in order to get down to a few plans. From this testing, we were able to narrow down and focus on just asking basic informational questions and criteria based questions in the beginning of the app. We also found some general design and usability issues that we fixed.

For usability testing, we aimed to answer the following question: Does the prototype demonstrate a successful flow with easy recovery? Do users understand the information being displayed on the page and does it make them feel comfortable in choosing a plan? We conducted usability testing with 10 participants between the range of 52-60 years of age. We gave them a scenario and asked them to complete tasks navigating the app. From this testing, we made many design changes before moving on with our design. A few example of usability issues that we found were the following:

1. Users felt uncertain with why they were providing all of this information before selecting a plan.
   
2. The navigation bar does not provide enough support or guidance when the users are deciding where to find their information.
   
3. Users wanted an “About AdventHealth” page to learn more about the company
   
4. Understand the workflow of signing up for Medicare
5. Users wanted a more detailed profile page that matched the introduction questions where they could make edits
   

High Fidelity Prototypes

We did multiple iterations of our high fidelity prototypes before handing them off to the sponsors. We assessed all five main areas on the app and from the usability testing and sponsor feedback made design changes. I will discuss screens that we iterated on and then the rest of the screens can be seen under the “final design” section.

The first screen to the right is one of the screens from the introduction questions in the beginning of the app. We ceated a progress bar during the initial entry questions. This progress allows for the user to know how far along in the questions they are. We also added explanations under the questions to explain to users why we are asking the question of them.

The second screen to the right is the plan recommendation screen. It shows all the plans that have been recommended to the user. We aded an option to filter by criteria and doctor or hospital in-network. From the testing we found people might have wanted a specific doctor, so making a filtering option helped people look for those needs. We also emphasized the plan benefits that matched the questions in the beginning that the user chose.

Introduction Questions

Plan Recommendation

Onboarding

Individual Plan Page

The first image to the left shows part of our onboarding for the plan screens. We created an onboarding process to help users understand the app’s features. We found some confusion with users about how to use the chat function, so we made this onboarding screen to explain it to them. We also created an onboarding screen for the different plan cards to help them understand they can click on them to read more in-depth.

The second image to the left shows an individual plan page. We showed the plan benefits using check marks which match with the beginning questions. We included buttons to sign up as the call to action, the information under tabs to make it easier to digest, and a chat button to get live help if the user has questions.

Although we had a lot more screens at this stage, I discussed the main screens where we iterated and made changes. The final design section will show the rest of the high fidelity prototype.