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MY RoleS: UX/UI Design & Business Strategy: Personas, Journey Mapping, Wireframing, Prototyping, Content Organization
Connecting individuals, families, and loved ones with the tools and resources to approach aging with confidence
Genworth Financial
Genworth Financial is a global leader in providing Long-Term Care [LTC] Insurance for older adults. Working as a Business Strategy and UX/UI intern at Genworth, I was fortunate to take part in developing a broad range of new services from ideation to MVP. While the project is currently in BETA testing, a large portion of the problem, and suggested solutions may not be displayed to protect confidentiality; however, a survey of some of the research, strategy, and UX/UI elements I worked to develop are briefly outlined. Please note that all aspects of the project outlined below are ALPHA stage suggestions, and may not represent the final product or future offerings.
WHAT IS Long term care INSURANCE?
While most of us are familiar with planning for our day-to-day lives through home, health, and auto insurance - much fewer of us are familiar with planning for our golden years with Long Term Care Insurance. Long Term Care offerings may differ by provider and plan; however, in general an LTC insurance plan typically serves to facilitate the payment for care services in the event we are no longer able to take care of ourselves due to aging. This is especially valuable in the event that in home assistance is needed with daily living activities such as meal preparation, bathing, dressing, etc.,- or if we may need out-of-home assistance such as daytime care-services or full-time care in an assisted living facility.
Current Landscape
As our nation’s baby-boomers transition into seniority over the coming decade, so will their need for care. Currently, 43 Million Americans spend $159B on care for aging loved ones each year; however, this cost is expected to increase by $111B by 2030 as our nations informal caregivers are expected to decrease by 50%. This influx of baby-boomers into seniority will also mark the first time our nation’s older adults outnumber children in US history, and create an unprecedented level of responsibility for adults in the ‘sandwich generation’ - or those who provide care for both their parents, and children at the same time. For older adults and caregivers, knowing how to properly plan for aging, and care for loved ones will become more essential than ever in providing for each others long-term health and well-being.
PROBLEM
Previously, there was no single trusted source of information, advice, and support available to families on the journey of aging. Because resources were disconnected and siloed, they often added to the financial, emotional, and time stresses of aging and caregiving rather than alleviating them.
OPPORTUNITY
To create a unified resource that delivers personalized solutions to help older adults stay independent longer, while providing caregivers resources that ease the uncertainty and stress that can accompany their experience. This will enable individuals to live happier, healthier, and more safely while aging.
THE ASK
Though specific aspects of this project will be kept from disclosure, my teammate and I started in a similar space of ambiguity. For the purpose of preventing experience bias, we were given little direct instruction on what was expected for the project, and only the objective of creating a wire-frame and prototype for a resource that could help older adults receive better care throughout the journey of aging. Having little direct detail on how this needed to be accomplished provided us the freedom to look into the problem space from an outside perspective, and begin developing an independent vision for the project by studying existing offerings, interdepartmental networking, and conducting independent qualitative / quantitative research on the market.
rESEARCH
With limited background on the LTC Market, our first step was to understand our stakeholders. To do so, my teammate and I segmented our potential end-users into three groups: 1. older adults, 2. care-givers, and 3. healthcare providers. We then divided each into multiple subgroups based on their needs, wants, and likelihood of using an assistive service throughout the journey of aging. After collecting data and white-boarding our insights, we began secondary research to better understand our consumers one-on-one. With this, I composed a series of spreadsheets and unique personas that focused on the motivations and behaviors of each segment. Though this research revealed many surprising insights, perhaps the most pertinent to our UX/UI strategy came from understanding how much time our oldest users spent online, and their top online activities. These included: using search engines, social networking, news/weather, watching videos, browsing food articles, and yes - even gaming.
Customer JournEy
Based on the insight we gained into the pain-points, motivations, and behaviors of each user, we narrowed our primary target to older adults and caregivers, and began crafting journey maps and wire-frames for how each may come to use, and find value in an assistive service for aging. Validating our assumption that there would be distinct differences in the behavior of each segment, we set our focus on updating the existing analog offerings to a digital platform, and introducing new offerings that merged into a single, unified resource for all things aging. With this, I finalized our outline of suggested offerings, journey map, and statement of work outlining our approach to deliverables.
Suggested Offerings
Culminating our user research, we narrowed our focus to four customer care needs that were not holistically met by the market. In our early stages, we defined these as: 1., Tools for caregivers and older adults to help themselves, 2., Tools for caregivers and older adults to help each other, 3., Tools for caregivers and older adults to access professional support, and 4., Tools to identify how others may help you. These were then refined to create the categories of 'Education / Guidance,' 'Collaboration Tools,' 'Personalized Support,' and a 'Marketplace.' Below is a brief outline of our approach to each suggested offering, as well as some of the challenges we identified and addressed.
1. Tools to help yourself: A searchable library of educational content on the process of aging and caregiving, as well as a personalized library of content tailored specifically to your own interests and care needs.
Challenges: Ensuring content is delivered exclusively to the appropriate recipient (i.e., older adults aren't likely to be receptive to articles about 'Taking Mom's Keys Away,' - much as caregivers aren't likely to be receptive to intimacy articles designed for individuals their parents age - though both may be of equal value to their respective audiences). Doing so would require getting to know our users.
2. Tools to help you care for others: Collaboration tools that enable older adults and caregivers to better connect, share information, and plan with one another.
Challenges: Using a service of this nature would require one user to create an account, and add permission for others to connect in a manner similar to social media. Vetting users to prevent fraud (i.e., ensuring that "Billy the Plumber" doesn't access Grandma's account), and data compliance were both key design considerations for this aspect of the user interface. In addition, creating value beyond account creation was also a key consideration for encouraging usership.
3. Tools for us to help you: By expanding offerings, we identified the potential to provide personalized support to older adults and caregivers through an assistance center available by online chat, phone, or text (surprisingly finding SMS as a preferred method of contact for both target audiences).
Challenges: Combining content from multiple locations into one, easily navigable database where internal respondents could provide assistance to a wide array of user questions with ease for both themselves, and those they communicate with.
4. Tools for others to help you: An online marketplace for users to discover new products and services, as well as special offers that they may not have been otherwise knowledgeable of.
Challenges: Discovering the needs and wants of users in order to convey appropriate, and useful offerings. Much like providing personally tailored content, this would require understanding each user individually, as well as building trust by delivering options in a manner that felt supportive, rather than sales driven.
KEY DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
After narrowing down our target market and suggested offerings, we set our focus on both the experiential design of the platform, and the aesthetic design of the interface. To do so, we began by studying both the layout, and interactive elements of the online resources frequently used by both segments, in addition to their desires and inhibitions using them. With these insights, we created a series of key design considerations and style guide for our UX/UI prototypes, then licensed Axure RP as our primary prototyping tool. Teaching ourselves to use use this software in a short time became one of our greatest challenges in the project; however, within several weeks, we were comfortable beginning our final wire-frame and prototype for Agile refinement. Below are a few of the design considerations we set for the project, as well as a few screenshots of the initial prototypes (Note: aside from photographs, all designs / content on this page are 100% original).
1. Making UX/UI design simple and intuitive for both user segments.
In studying the online behavior of older adults and caregivers, we were not surprised to find differences in the aesthetics and navigation of the sites they frequented most often. It was surprising; however, to find just how distinctly different they were. Among the most notable difference was the more traditional, linear arrangement of content on sites most visited by older adults. These appeared reminiscent of sites from the 1990's, featuring large copy - yet a similarly cluttered look at the same time. With this insight, we began designing a more archaic prototype for our older users - while creating a much more modern, and simple design that would be intuitive to our younger, on-the go caregivers.
Applying Insight to UX.
Creating separate interfaces required specific tact to ensure all necessary information was accessible to the right user, and that both could navigate, and communicate information without confusing one another. To achieve this required unifying the aesthetics and messaging of the landing experience, while creating a personalized experience for each user after login. For our oldest users, our recommendations included features such as a left side panel that could easily direct them to the most core services. For our younger users, these included expandable panels that could be toggled on-or-off to emulate their loved ones experience, while providing a more intuitive, and modern experience navigating their personal care needs.
2. Maximizing Interactivity.
The degree of interactivity we could incorporate into the interface was of question when we initially evaluated our oldest segments. Not knowing if this would present a technological barrier or not, we set our sights on researching their behaviors, and navigational limitations. Analyzing the amount of time older adults spent engaged in online activities such as social media and games - as well as their desire to picture younger versions of themselves; however, we set our sights on maximizing – rather than minimizing the interactivity of the user experience for this segment.
Applying Insight to UX.
Developing a custom profile that would fit each of our users daily life and care needs would require getting to know them on a deeper level. To avoid using complex questionnaires and arduous processes that may make them feel uncomfortable, we applied our insight into the online behaviors of each segment to make a series of short, easy to use questionnaires that could help us get to know them. For example, rather than asking questions about a users dietary habits that may feel potentially invasive, we recommended offering recipes that would provide genuine value to the user, while getting to know them better through elective responses to question about their meal preferences.
3. Driving New and Return Use.
During the initial stage of the project, we set our focus on creating a platform for existing clients only. As the product evolved into a fully functioning prototype; however, the potential to develop a broader user base became evident. Midway through the initial product design, we pivoted our mission and began focusing on how to expand the product to allow for public use. To provide room for future expansion required adding an additional layer to our UX/UI design to allow for member services, as well as new users. To generate interest among new users, we proposed offering a generous range of services to the public without requiring them to create an account, and driving both membership and return use by offering a service plan with premium features.
Applying Insight to UX.
To truly provide value to our customers would require they used, and continued to use the resource. Finding that direct messages about lifestyle habits may seem dictative and discourage use, we set our focus on positioning content in a manner that would feel more natural to them. Applying our insight into our oldest segments online behavior, for example, we identified the opportunity to position content in a manner similar to the news sources they visited most often, and providing frequent updates. This could not only help attract new users by making them more comfortable with the presentation of our content, but also give them a reason to come back.
Planning the UX
After months of crafting user journey maps, wire-frames, and prototypes - we arrived at our final step of early stage development. At this point, my initial teammate moved on, and I was responsible for organizing all content for the platform so that it could be vetted to the right users. To do so, I developed a numeric system using 0's and 1's to rate over 500 articles in relevance to the users specific care needs, and their stage caregiving and aging life-cycle. This resulted in a collection of over 15,000 data points that could produce innumerable ways to vet content to the correct user based on simple answers to short survey questions. Using this data in partnership with external consultants, we began our final production of a high fidelity MVP.
While many aspects of the final product, features, and functions have not been detailed for confidentially purposes, below are a few images from our initial alpha prototypes. These again are initial sketches that have been since scrubbed (content, logos, etc.,), and are solely included to demonstrate the design and layout of the prototypes developed in Axure RP during ideation. Please note that none of the features or content in these designs may be reflective of any aspect of the final product which was developed separately based on suggestions, analysis, and agile development. As of December 2019; however, I am incredibly proud to say that we did take our initial ask through to the development of a fully functional MVP that is currently in BETA testing. Following the current pilot, I look forward to including more information, as well as seeing this become one, unified resource that can help all stakeholders through the journey of aging. My sincerest thanks all the incredible people I worked with and learned from in this process!
Alpha & Beta Prototypes
