In 2014 the Affordable Care Act began to require all Americans to have health insurance.

To help small businesses with this change, my team partnered with an insurance marketplace and began providing them with a way to help their employees get insured.

This is the story of how I worked as a design researcher to discover challenges with the product.

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The challenge

The Affordable Care Act brought an unprecedented change and challenges to small businesses as well as their employees.

We tried to simplify that change by offering a way small business employees could purchase insurance through their employer - something that traditionally was not done easily, or affordably.

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My approach

As the sole researcher on this team, I used a mix of in depth studies, spot check phone calls, synthesized findings, and interactive workshops to bring the customers’ experiences to the rest of the team.

When our beta launched I called each new small business owners who signed up to spot check each new experience.

As small business employees began to sign up, I coordinated and led two days of research sessions with real customers in front of our insurance partner in Chicago.

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The impact

Through dozens of conversations with our new customers, I quickly found that employers and employees alike were confused about what they were buying. The product made too many assumptions about an average person’s knowledge of insurance, leaving them unsure if they were buying group or individual plans.

This confusion led to low signups and significant drop off.

I led the team through empathy and brainstorm sessions, and helped guide our ideas based on my customer observations. Together we began to create a completely new flow that addressed confusion we had seen.

Unfortunately, the insurance open enrollment period ended before we could launch the re-design, and the project got cancelled due to the low engagement.