Case Studies

Detailed Examples of My Work

USAA

Online Health and Lifestyle Questionnaire

Category Tags

Life Insurance
Web
2011

Challenge

At USAA, circa 2010, of the people who would begin the process of purchasing a life insurance policy, the majority of those who would bail or abandon the process did so during Part 2. This is because Part 2 had to be completed via a telephone interview provided by a third-party, and this telephone interview was a horrid experience.

The interviewer was required to read the questions in as monotone a voice as possible, and they were not permitted to assist the customer in understanding the questions, at all. There are potentially hundreds of medical questions requiring detailed answers for each insured to be covered by the policy, and many of the questions sounded strange. Lastly, the interview had to be completed in a single session.

Solution

Make the Health and Lifestyle Questionnaire a self-service web-application that the Primary Insured can complete in their own time. Since they don’t have to complete the questionnaire in one sitting, they are free to take a break, retrieve documents or just take care of daily tasks.

Because of the complexity of the questions, the variability of state regulations, and the needs of the applicants, the solution had to have the following three attributes:

Be as accessible as possible for the widest range of people purchasing life insurance;
Be implemented in a modular fashion so that the questions are never hard-coded;
Provide the applicant with a clear sense of where they are in the process of completing the Questionnaire which, depending on the number of Insureds and the answers provided, could be hundreds of questions.

Available Artifacts

Involved Work

Primary

Wireframes
Requirements Gathering
Document Management
Process / Workflow Diagraming
Information Architecture
Accessibility Testing
Performance Testing

Secondary

Web-application Prototyping

USAA

Implement USAA Health Exchange

Category Tags

Medicare
Health Insurance
Web
2012
2013

Challenge

Design an online health marketplace to be built by a 3^rd party, that will go live in less than 1 year with Medicare plans from multiple providers, before almost anyone else has one.

Solution

Multiple rounds of user testing with members and close collaboration with compliance officers, financial advisors and technical architects yield a Marketplace that makes shopping for Medicare and health insurance “fun.”

Available Artifacts

Involved Work

Primary

Wireframes
Requirements Gathering
Document Management
Process / Workflow Diagraming
Information Architecture
Compliance Documentation
Accessibility Testing
Performance Testing

Scope section for “Implement USAA Health Exchange” collapsed. Click to expand.

Scope section for “Implement USAA Health Exchange” expanded. Click to collapse.

Provide an online Marketplace offering Medicare insurance from multiple providers to eligible members.
Redesign the acquisition process for USAA’s Medicare Supplement products.
Help members easily determine their eligibility for Medicare insurance.
Accommodate members who are shopping for Medicare insurance for someone else.
Extensible design so other types of health insurance can be offered in the (near) future.
Comply with ALL state and federal rules and regulations regarding solicitation for and acquisition of Medicare insurance.
Provide, coordinate and maintain documentation for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and for the Department of Insurance for every state in which USAA will sell, for the Education, Marketplace and Application phases of the member’s acquisition experience.*
Integrate disparate backend technologies into a single interface that simplifies shopping, comparison and acquisition for the members.
Design and oversee a unified information architecture for member-facing and employee-facing procedures.
Work with the Lead Graphic Designer to develop comprehensive documents (style guides, wireframes, comps, etc.) for 3rd party developers to use in constructing the Marketplace.

* This was a nightmare I was uniquely suited for. I had to prepare 46 packets of documentation of the planned screens / interfaces for the Educational health insurance webpages, the screens of the Health Marketplace, and the screens of the USAA Medicare Supplement Application flow—exactly as they will appear to the member when everything goes live. Our compliance officers had to submit this documentation, annotated by me, to all State Departments of Insurance and CMS months in advance of the project’s delivery date. Most states approved everything, but 9 required material changes to multiple screens of the Marketplace before they would approve them, and we had to build exactly what we said we would or face serious regulatory consequences.

Vertical Alliance

Selling Seats from Back Office

Category Tags

Ticketing
Web
2005

Challenge

Among their suite of ticketing products was Back Office, a .NET Web application that acted as the nexus for all of a client’s ticketing applications. The business process of selling tickets through Back Office needed to be streamlined and enhanced.

Solution

Working with the Technical Architect, we designed a new interface and data format, Zone GUI XML (.ZGX), based upon GDI, SVG and XML, that would replace the ponderous Flash-based interface—I provided the analysis determining that redesigning and reprogramming the system while continuing to use Flash was cost-prohibitive.

My new system called for two seperate business processes and sets of interfaces: Administration and Selling. I produced hybridized documents of functional specs (use cases), UI specs, and business processes.

Available Artifacts

Involved Work

Primary

Wireframes
Requirements Gathering
Process / Workflow Diagraming
Information Architecture
UI Design
Business Process Design
Use Cases