Blue Cross Blue Shield: Launching a Product for a New Business Venture

Role: Product Design Lead & UX Researcher

Context

CareFirst (AKA: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maryland) saw the trending landscape of healthcare going direct-to-consumer with virtual care, and knew it needed to create an offering to compete in the market. In an effort to do so, CareFirst understood that if the virtual care solution were brought to market under the CareFirst organization, it would be doomed to fail because of the slow and bureaucratic nature of their company. 

With that in mind, they set up an offshoot company called Atlas Health and set out to launch a virtual care solution called CloseKnit. The Productive Edge Experience Design & Strategy teams partnered with Atlas Health to build the CloseKnit application, empowering their virtual care business model with an iOS & and Android application.

Process

I brought together a diverse team that was empowered to start with a clean slate. We started with helping our client’s product and technology teams align on a shared vision for the product. I guided them through a series of workshops that ultimately defined a product vision and set of initial goals to build momentum, gain cross-functional team alignment, and to ensure that everyone was working toward a shared vision of the future.

A UX researcher on my team and myself collaborated to conduct a series of qualitative research studies to identify prospective member needs. What we found what mattered most to people when switching to not only a new provider (doctor) but a solely virtual care doctor:

• Healthcare coverage that fits within their budget, getting that pricing upfront, and being conveyed the value from what is being paid

• Needed help picking the right plan & the right doctor(s)

• Ease of scheduling

The other researcher and I then used this information to collaborate and create an aspirational journey map to act as a north star throughout the project for the ideal experiences/set of experiences a CloseKnit user would likely have.

Now that the user needs, primary use cases, and guiding principles were intact, I, along with another product designer on the team, got to work designing the app. To ensure we got to the bests solution quickly, we started with paper prototyping and immediately testing those prototypes with potential end users. Using that feedback, we quickly progressed the designs into well-documented wireframes and a high-fidelity, clickable prototype where we iteratively tested with end users to get a more pointed feel for how to create the best virtual care experience possible.

We partnered closely with technical & product teams at both Atlas and Blue Cross Blue Shield to ensure the desired experience was still technically feasible and could fit our rapid timeline to release. 

The team brought the MVP of the app and the associated marketing website from concept to market in less than 6 months. 

Results

In parallel with the design effort, we also partnered with our Technology Strategy team to build an iterative crawl, walk, run roadmap that outlined the backlog for crawl and the capabilities and epics to be built toward in subsequent phases. 

In its first year alone, Atlas Health team has been able to onboard over 10K new members to its platform and is seeing a 92% retention rate with members that have been on the platform for over six months.