Project - To develop a site design for Kaus that allows users to easily purchase insurance.
Target User - Persons looking to purchase new health insurance.
Deliverables - A responsive desktop site that works in mobile and tablet formats.
My role - Research, planning, design and implementation.
Tools - Sketch, Invision, Adobe Suite and Silverback

Process

Research

From my secondary research,
I was able to pull a few choice pieces of information:

• According to a federal analysis from Oct, 30, 2015, people chosing health insurance plans in federal market places overwhelmingly buy the cheapest plans they can find.
• Young and healthy people are shunning health insurance plans altogether because prices are too high.
• Emotions, bias, and other limitations drive decisions, not rational analysis.

Personas

My interview questions were directed at a group of interviewees that were representative of persons in their 20's, 40's and retirement age.  All were tech savvy enough to navigate a web page, and all had opinions about what they liked and disliked about making purchases online.

Trish, was a perfect representative of the audience that would be most profoundly effected by an opportunity to find affordable and easy to purchase health care.  She is single, works for herself and is at an age where health care starts to become increasingly important. She is also in the market for a new healthcare plan.

Information Architecture

When research was completed I created a site map that would represent what the architecture of the site would look like.  My main goal was to include the most important features for quickly educating the user on terms and what is available, then allowing them to sign up and purchase a plan, all of this would exist in the navigation and on the landing page.

Interaction Design

Next steps required that we lay out a common interaction that would represent how our user might navigate through the site to find what they were looking for.  I chose to map out the process of purchasing an insurance plan.

After I had a good map of how someone might research and purchase health insurance using the kaus site, I began sketching out ideas for the screens one would use for finding the information they would need to select a plan.  I went ahead and sketched the landing page and some mobile screens.  Because we were building out a desktop site, I moved forward with low fidelity digital wireframes of the landing page.

From those sketches I developed some of the initial low fidelity digital wireframes using sketch and then started prototyping using Invision.  I was getting used to using Sketch, so I started with the mobile screens to get practice and then moved on to the desktop screens for my final low fidelity wires and prototype.

UI Design

Once my initial wireframes were completed and a working prototype was built out in Invision it was time to move on to the UI of the kaus site.  I already knew that I wanted a very clean interface that would be easy to navigate and understand, so I also chose warm and colorful illustrations to provide a sense of calm.  For the logo work, I wanted something that would reflect reassurance, hence the smiley face word mark.  My color choices were made to reflect trust, confidence and to provide a sight reference when navigating the site.  Blue was my top choice with orange being my accent color for important buttons.

After decided on a color trio, (blue, orange and white) it was time to create my UI kit for the high fidelity screens.  After doing a lot of research into what other health care companies were using as their overall visual theme, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted: to convey trust, confidence and and calm.
Easy to read typefaces, muted colors and simple shapes.

With the UI accounted for, I began assembling my prototype using Sketch and Invision.  There were quite a few screens to account for, but with my UI kit/style guide, it was easy to get into a rhythm in assembling the pages.  All through the process, I modified type sizes, white space and color keys.  I wanted to end up with something that would be buildable, by me, or a web designer, so that meant sticking with a simple, and flexible framework.

SUMMARY

Testing the prototype was relatively trouble free, and I did learn quite a few things from being able to observe the test participants.  While none of the participants truly struggled, several of them did hesitate at points in the plan selection process.  One key area that needed to be addressed, was to make sure that a visual narrative was present on all pages that would help guide them through the process.  Also, highlight colors, guiding the user on where to click were also enhanced.  Overall, I felt like this project was successful for a first.  Next time through, I will try to spend less time on making everything perfect the first time through, and focus on getting the bulk of the work done, then refine later.