Redesign

Guided Healthcare Experience

Lead Product Designer 3 Months 5+ stakeholders 4+ User Testing Engagament Visibility User Confusion Web Responsive

The Problem

Users were confused about the roles of Health Pros vs. Medical Allies and expected real-time chat when communication was actually asynchronous. The landing page also failed to clearly promote self-service tools or contact options, leading to frustration and reduced engagement. A redesign was needed to clarify support options and improve user trust.

The Challenge

  • Confusion between Health Pros and Medical Allies
  • Misleading expectations of live chat communication
  • Overemphasis of Health Pro on the landing page
  • Low visibility of self-service tools

My Approach

  • Led product strategy, IA, and UI execution
  • Partnered with product, development, and research teams
  • Built and tested interactive prototypes through 4+ user testing rounds
  • Validated concepts through moderated usability testing

The Outcome

  • ↑ visbilitiy with self-service tools
  • ↑ engagement with self-service tools
  • ↓ user confusion around contect methods
  • 4+ rounds of user testing validated design clarity and communication flow

Background

Setting the Stage for the Redesign

To redesign effectively, it’s important to first understand what the product offered, why change was needed at this stage, and what external pressures were driving the initiative. Healthcare Navigation was already a valuable part of the Alight platform—but as user needs evolved and business expectations increased, it became clear that the experience needed to be restructured for clarity, trust, and ease of use. The following sections outline the product's purpose, the timing behind the redesign, and the factors that made this work critical.

About the Product

Healthcare Navigation is a core feature within the Alight platform that connects users to a mix of self-service tools—such as provider search, a health library, and symptom checkers—and human-led support through assigned Health Pros. The goal of the product is to help users manage their healthcare journey with confidence, offering both digital autonomy and guided assistance.

Why This Work Mattered Now

The existing experience had grown unclear over time, with overlapping features, evolving terminology, and interface inconsistencies that left users confused about where to go and who to contact. As healthcare support needs grew more complex, it became essential to simplify the experience, clarify expectations, and make both self-service tools and Health Pros more discoverable.

Drivers for Redesign

Users were struggling to differentiate between Health Pros and Medical Allies, expecting live chat functionality when messaging asynchronously, and overlooking self-service features due to poor page hierarchy. From a business standpoint, there was an urgent need to reinforce the value of the Health Pro model, improve engagement, and fulfill contractual feature expectations for key clients—driving a time-sensitive redesign effort.

Problem

Defining What Wasn't Working

While the value of Healthcare Navigation was clear in theory, the actual user experience introduced friction, confusion, and unmet expectations. To design an effective solution, we first had to define where the experience was breaking down—and why. This section outlines the key usability issues, evidence from testing and feedback, and specific struggles users encountered while navigating the platform.

Key Usability Issues

The original experience lacked a clear hierarchy, overemphasized the Health Pro, and buried self-service tools. Visual cues and page layout led users to misunderstand what kind of support was available and how to access it.

What We Saw in the Evidence

Through support tickets, stakeholder feedback, and early testing, we consistently saw users misinterpret messaging as live chat, overlook symptom checkers and provider search tools, and struggle to understand Health Pro communication timelines.

What Users Were Struggling With

Users didn’t know the difference between a Health Pro and a Medical Ally, assumed only one form of communication was available, and often expected real-time responses. This misalignment in expectations created frustration and led to decreased engagement with the product.

Scope

What we Aimed to Solve—And What We Had to Work Around

Redesigning the Healthcare Navigation experience required balancing ambitious user-centered goals with business priorities, technical constraints, and platform-level limitations. This section outlines the objectives that guided our work, the principles that shaped our decisions, and the factors that limited the scope of what could realistically be achieved within the project timeline.

User Goals

Ensure users could confidently differentiate between Health Pros and Medical Allies, clearly understand how and when to communicate with a Health Pro, and discover self-service tools more easily.

Business Goals

Reinforce the value of the Health Pro service, reduce confusion-related support inquiries, and increase visibility of underutilized platform features to demonstrate ROI to key clients.

Design principles guiding decisions

Decisions were grouned in usability best practices including:

  • Clarity through hierarchy
  • Progressive disclosure to reduce cognitive load
  • Consistency and recognition over recall
  • Transparency in communication expectations

Technical Limitations

Some components—such as the message center architecture—could not be redesigned from the ground up due to shared dependencies across other platform features.

Timeline Constraints

The project operated under a compressed timeline driven by client commitments, with less than one week between strategic planning and testing-ready prototypes.

Out-of-Scope Areas

We were unable to change the core Health Pro assignment logic or overhaul the backend messaging system. These areas were excluded due to system-wide dependencies and resource limitations outside the project scope.

Approach

Designing for Clarity and Confidence

To address confusion and increase clarity, I applied core UX principles such as information hierarchy, progressive disclosure, and recognition over recall throughout the redesign.

I led strategy, information architecture, and UI design—starting with restructuring the layout to better distinguish between the Healthcare Navigation landing page and the Health Pro experience. This supported clearer mental models by visually separating system-led tools from human-led services.

To reduce cognitive load and promote discoverability, I repositioned the Health Pro on the landing page and elevated underutilized self-service features. Contact methods were consolidated into a single overflow menu, following consistency and standards to reduce confusion around communication channels.

I created prototypes and partnered with research to conduct over four rounds of user testing. Testing validated that users understood the new structure, set correct expectations for asynchronous communication (informed by feedback and visibility of system status), and felt more confident navigating the platform.

Results

What Improved After the Redesign

After four rounds of user testing, the redesigned Healthcare Navigation experience showed clear improvements in user comprehension and engagement. Participants were able to distinguish between the roles of Health Pros and Medical Allies, understood that messaging was asynchronous, and navigated the platform with greater confidence. Self-service tools, previously overlooked, gained visibility through a refined layout and clearer content hierarchy.

By consolidating communication options into an intuitive overflow menu and applying email-like patterns to the message center, users had a more accurate understanding of what to expect—and when. Testing confirmed that the new structure addressed the most critical pain points and aligned the interface more closely with how users naturally seek support.


Top Findings


8/10 Participants looked through each major sections of the page. (6/8 specifically called out options to get help)


So I guess I could make a request here [Start a request] in order to get help with finding a doctor for my healthcare, or I can just reach out to the healthcare itself [Contact your Health Pro] or call the 800 number.

And then at the bottom is get help with a specific need. So this looks like we can do a request for a question or concern. But if I had knee pain, I'd probably go start with the health library.

7/10 participants stated the purpose of the page is to get information about your healthcare.

It's a central place to help get you started with your healthcare needs.

It looks like a portal for customers to navigate their health needs. Everything they would need to understand their policy.

3/10 participates stated the purpose of the page is to connect you with the correct healthcare resources.

It's a navigation page. It connects you with helpful resources like insurance, a health library, the health pro. It gets you to the right places.

It's kind of a one stop shop. It's got personalized information for me. It's like a dashboard sort of, only it's a way to navigate to different things having to do with my health care.

7/10 participants stated they did expect to click "Visit Health Pro Connection" to learn more about their Health Pro.

Yeah it is. The button is pretty clear on what that means.

9/10 participants stated the purpose of the page is to assist them with healthcare related services.

You know, services I can provide cost benefits, claims help with claims, help with the medical condition. And then there's a bunch of FAQs at the bottom, so these are all the different things and it's kind of what I would expect.

So this is exactly the information I would need to be able to get questions answered about my health stuff and more forward with specific requests.

8/10 participants stated the content on the page is not overwhelming.

I think this is good. In fact, I wish there was a little bit more about how each of these things can help me.

This is the exact amount that I need, it's not too overwhelming. There is a lot of like artwork or images which breaks up instead of it just being content or text. The icons or images are also a reflection of what it is that the topic is about. So these images help me navigate and make sure I'm at the right category, and it's not too wordy, and it has little bits of color throughout to make sure that's it's mot just one.

Well, it's a lot of content, but I have to say that it's laid out really great. It's not too compact. It's got the necessary messages I could possibly want to look at right away. I can navigate out of this particular page if I need to. Then as we start getting down, we get into some of the clickable things which you're noticing the cool icons here.

Key Patterns

Reusable UX Patterns

As part of this redesign, I introduced a set of scalable interaction patterns and content structures that not only solved immediate usability issues, but also supported long-term consistency across the platform. These patterns were guided by UX best practices, validated through user testing, and designed to work within existing system constraints—ensuring they could be reused across similar healthcare support experiences.

Overflow Menu for Contact Options

Consolidated multiple ways to reach a Health Pro (message, request, call) into a single, easily scannable menu—supporting consistency, clarity, and scalability.

Email-Inspired Message Center

Applied asynchronous design patterns such as timestamps, message status, and timeline transparency to help users understand communication expectations.

Page-Level Content Hierarchy

Differentiated the Healthcare Navigation landing page from the Health Pro detail page using visual hierarchy, reducing user confusion and aligning with mental models.

Reflection

Lessons in Communication, Alignment, and Design Logic

This project pushed me to grow beyond execution and into strategic articulation. I had to continuously advocate for design decisions that not only solved user problems, but also aligned with stakeholder goals, product limitations, and technical realities. One of the most valuable outcomes of this work was strengthening my ability to clearly communicate design rationale to non-designers—ensuring that every decision was grounded in logic, user impact, and product context.

Testing-led iteration gave us confidence in the final direction, and restructuring the page hierarchy successfully resolved major points of confusion. Aligning user needs with business goals helped make the case for design tradeoffs, and the overflow menu pattern proved to be both scalable and intuitive.
I would push earlier for stakeholder alignment around messaging expectations and system constraints. Some logic needed to be revisited mid-way through the project as we uncovered architectural blockers. A more formal shared understanding upfront could have reduced design pivots later on.
This project exercised my ability to articulate design decisions to non-designers, adapt solutions based on stakeholder priorities, and defend choices with logic tied to user value. I became more confident navigating competing points of view and translating product complexity into clear, actionable interfaces.

Thank you for reading!

View Demo Next Project

Don't Be A Stranger!

Let's collaborate and create something amazing!

Book a call Copy email address