Caroline Keem, UX Design

Humana Experience Transformation

Redesigning the healthcare sales flow for small businesses

Humana’s online sales flow for small businesses purchasing healthcare benefits was underperforming—causing user drop-off, confusion, and low conversion rates. The process was complex, with unclear language, inconsistent interface patterns, and a lack of user trust in pricing transparency.

My Role

As the UX lead on a cross-functional team (designer, copywriter, researcher, and UX strategist), I:

Planned and executed usability tests targeting key friction points in the flow
Created and iterated high-fidelity prototypes used in testing and stakeholder presentations
Collaborated with the copywriter to improve clarity and tone across critical pages
Worked closely with the researcher to align design changes with behavioral data
Coordinated design workstreams and kept stakeholders aligned through frequent check-ins

The Impact

Streamlined navigation and clarified decision points in the sales journey
Improved form field usability and content clarity
Increased user confidence in plan selection and pricing
Conversion rates showed measurable lift in the weeks following rollout

Empathize

Issue #1

Too many clicks to get into the sales funnel

Original flow model showing breakdowns

Small business owners had to go four pages deep to shop for plans. Most thought they were lost. When finally on the right page they were faced with an abstract choice between plan structures. Small business owners juggle roles and lack the expertise that a dedicated HR person would bring to shopping for benefits. Stumped, they stopped here.

Issue #2

Asking users for complicated information

Standard industry classification code

Standard industry classification (SIC) lookup was a required field before users could see any plans. Most business owners do not know their SIC code and would have to ask their accountant.

This is too much work for one field with a look-up function to do. There are hundreds of SIC codes and sifting through them in a single lookup field was an exercise in guesswork and frustration akin to reading an encyclopedia through a keyhole.

Issue #3

Users couldn't find plans they had previously selected

Plan selection

Users would select a plan and then be faced with this dialog box. It was not easy to spot the plan one has just selected in this list.

No one knew what to do next. It was unclear whether or not the next step was to Review selections. How does one keep shopping for plans? Navigation to Dental or Vision was not clear.

Issue #4

People who had bought plans weren't enrolling

Online enrollment for benefits page

Poor indicators on an enrollment page caused many customers to fail to set up benefits. Customer support had to constantly monitor the enrollment process in order to make sure businesses were signing up in a timely way.

Employees would go through enrollment steps and not submit their benefits selections at the end. Support teams at Humana had to re-open enrollment for customers who failed to enroll properly.

Ideate

Team ideation

Collaborate with a strong team of developers, business analyst, UI designer and UX strategist

wide ranging brainstorms exploring what is possible.

Heuristic evaluation

Using known techniques to evaluate issues

Heurisitc evaluation of online enrollment page

Used in combination with heuristic evaluation

Prototype

Issue #1

Simplify & Clarify flow

New flow model

Move specific information requests into the exact spot they are needed. Make plans easier to find.

Give the people what they want. Allow users to see plans and tentative pricing within the first couple clicks.

Add flexibility. Improve exploration. Add methods for comparison shopping. Make it easier to adjust plans pricing and set a budget.

Issue #2

New look up page for SIC codes

Hold on. Replace one little field with a whole page?

Instead of a field this look up became a page where users could look up their code and move on.

We also put this into context. Instead of blocking shoppers from looking at ANY plans, This page would be the entry to looking at dental plans (the only benefit whose pricing is affected by industry).

Interactive prototype (Humana branding removed)
View prototype

Issue #3

Selecting plans

Plan selection

Creating a shopping cart page for selected plans would match the mental model users bring to any online shopping experience.

Interactive prototype (Humana branding removed)
View prototype

Issue #4

Redesigning enrollment

Questioning the real needs on this page and restructuring content

As I interrogated the contents and actual enrollment process I realized that some items originally positioned as "steps in the enrollment process" weren't really enrollment steps. I moved those out and added a clear "Submit" button.

Created two different prototypes to comparison test with users.

Interactive prototype (Humana branding removed)
View prototype

Test

Remote user testing

Regular cadence of remote user testing

Remote user testing via Webex took place every other sprint. This kept UX updates a couple of sprints ahead of the development teams so that everything they built had been vetted with customers. In advance of each test I would present the prototype to development and data services to insure that the design didn't have any gaps and remained within the realm of possibility. I would then outline a test plan and work with our researcher to write a script of questions.

In-person testing

End-to-end flow tests conducted in person

Local small business owners were recruited to come in to our office and go through the shopping flow in person.

Iterate

Issue #1

Simplify & Clarify flow

Testing and iterating to prove or disprove flow improvements

Repeated testing and iterating proved that some questions we were putting to insurance shoppers were outside the realm of comprehension for the layperson. Some features were reiterated, failed in testing 3 or 4 times and finally abandoned. This is how it should be.

Issue #2

New look up page for SIC codes

Successful test

Successful on the first test. Testers moved through this portion in under a minute. Update was able to be executed and added to the flow quickly, removing what had been a huge barrier in users' flow.

Interactive prototype (Humana branding removed)
View prototype

Issue #3

Selecting plans

Plan selection

The cart metaphor helped greatly. One iteration and re-test was needed to clarify how to return to shopping for more plans before being incorporated.

Interactive prototype (Humana branding removed)
View prototype

Issue #4

Redesigning enrollment

Reduced calls to support

Two versions of the new "enrollment" flow had been designed. In testing both were equally successful and neither showed aggregious usability problems. We decided to go with the design that would be the least layout change and was easiest for development to execute.

We needed to re-iterate and re-test to make sure the employee notification process was clearer. Releasing this update relieved the need for Humana staff to monitor customer enrollement or re-open enrollment periods.

Interactive prototype (Humana branding removed)
View prototype