Goal

Open access to affordable coverage for more people by fixing a long-standing policy flaw in which the household cost of health coverage through a job was not taken into account when determining eligibility for help paying for coverage.

Outcome

In 2022’s Open Enrollment this update opened access to affordable health coverage for:

• 2.8 million children under age 18

• 1.35 million adults spending an average of nearly 16% of their incomes on insurance

• 451,000 people who had no coverage at all

Source: kff.org

My role: Design

• Review and synthesize policy requirements to establish primary goals, inform design objectives, and identify constraints

• Analyze findings from past research to identify opportunities to resolve known pain points related to the existing set of questions, while making updates to support policy changes

• Apply established product design and content principles, patterns, and guidelines to iterate on the existing sequence and grouping of questions, draft copy, improve overall guidance on how to answer accurately, and streamline the flow within the section

Goal

Support people seeking health care coverage outside the annual Open Enrollment period by providing clear, personalized, step-by-step instructions based on their answers to a short questionnaire.

Outcome

Research told us that while results pages offered people useful instructions, the information was hard to to parse, with little hierarchy and very generalized next steps.

Redesigned pages addressed these issues by outlining clear, distinct, and easy-to-scan steps for each possible outcome, and reinforcing that the results are personalized rather than generic by connecting their answer with the outcome.

My role: Design

Picking up where another designer had left off several months earlier, I reviewed research outcomes to understand pain points, and designs for similar use cases to establish a starting point. Then I looked for ways to incorporate design elements from elsewhere in the product to maintain consistency.

Take a look! Start here, and enter 28801 in the zip code prompt. Choose either answer on the next page, take the respective brief quiz, and see your results.

Goal

Improve the usability and effectiveness of a checklist tool to help users document inspections of government-funded service providers and facilities.

Outcome

The redesigned application fixed both known and newly discovered usability issues, and users responded favorably from the very first launch.
Over time we’ve iterated on the product to meet different state requirements, while protecting its value as a reliable tool to ensure effective site inspections and overall quality of service.

My role: Research, design

• Prepped and facilitated a workshop with users to identify procedural pain points and software shortcomings to guide feature priority decisions

• Reviewed business rules and process documents to supplement research activities

• Interviewed users to get feedback on designs as well as developed product in use

• Established in-app information structures and relationships

• Explored different ways to maintain and share a team knowledge base, including site and content maps and a project glossary

• Wrote user stories and outlined workflows for individual user types to clarify task details and define interface requirements

• Created wireframes to explore different ways to support user tasks in the interface

Goal

A medical facility with over 10,000 employees sought to improve employee engagement, by removing communication obstacles within teams and improving access to organizational services and information through the development of a custom mobile app.

Outcome

The project is under development by the organization’s internal team. As our team phased out of the project, I worked closely with team members on the client side to ensure a smooth handoff of all research and design artifacts, and made myself available for support as needed.

My role: Research, design, usability testing

In addition to research activites including interviews and existing research review, I designed and conducted multiple usability test sessions onsite, with groups of users as well as individuals. This entailed:

• Identifying attributes of “good” participants based on their roles, habits, and contextual factors, and creating effective screener surveys

• Tracking individual participation to avoid burnout within a relatively small test pool

• Coordinating sessions onsite and managing equipment and space

• Creating functional prototypes and facilitation guides, and capturing outcomes effectively

• Facilitating test sessions

• Organizing and sharing research findings using a variety of methods, including annotated PDFs, research reports, and user personas

• Designing the product’s beta test plan

Goal

The same medical facility wanted to redesign its massive intranet system, responding to both employee feedback and data evidence suggesting that it was difficult to use. The project, broken into three phases, began with the design of a new microsite to capture most-used features and information based on analytics, to proceed through a content overhaul and information architecture restructuring.

Outcome

We delivered the first phase of this project to the client’s development team. The subsequent phases of the project are on hold pending internal restructuring at the organization, but preliminary test outcomes suggest a good starting point that should serve users well in the meantime.

My role: Design, usability testing

Using research findings and design assets from the previous project, designed and facilitated usability tests on designs, which entailed:

• Defining specific learning goals for testing

• Creating two test plans, including scenarios, user profiles, prototypes, facilitation guides, and a method for capturing outcomes

• Along with a partner from our client team, conducting two rounds of usability testing, first on medium-fidelity wireframes in an Invision prototype, and then on high-fidelity ones

• Analyzed outcomes and summarized findings from research activities, and created visual artifacts to share results with the rest of the team

• Based on research findings, made interface design change recommendations via annotated mockups

Goal

A project facilitated by the nonprofit Asheville Design Center in partnership with the City of Asheville, our goal was to get community input about how to use a long-vacant and contentiously debated vacant lot in the center of downtown Asheville.
We were challenged to spark imagination, create spaces for trust and good-faith conversation between people at different extremes of opinion, collect feedback and ideas from as wide a representation of our community as we possibly could, and represent those ideas in a vision that accurately reflected what we heard.

Outcome

At its conclusion the project’s advisory board presented a report to City Council summarizing the community’s vision for the empty lot. While we await a final design based on the vision, the lot is being used for temporary installations, including a community garden tended by neighboring tenants and, recently, a rally to protect immigrant families.

My role: Volunteer researcher

• Created project briefs to help different project teams keep track of project goals, responsibilities, and timeline

• Designed an activity survey using images to prompt feedback on potential uses of the site, with the intent to spark imagination and encourage people to envision something they may not have thought of before

• Conducted brief one-on-one interviews with community members during engagement opportunities

• Organized research data to assist with analysis