Integrated eligibility
Prioritizing a vulnerable and often overlooked audience
Integrated eligibility
Prioritizing a vulnerable and often overlooked audience
Overview
There are two parallel, interwoven stories in this case study: the first, the redesign of a highly fraught and confusing benefits application process; the second, a study in design studio development and the creation of an internal product team.
Integrated eligibility (IE) refers to a single, consolidated application process that covers a group of benefits programs — some federal, some state-specific.
Mural boards identifying business rules and crafting rough wireframes for what was typically extensive legal review (in this example, for Wisconsin's Access system).
These different applications all have their own business rules and determination requirements, and states all administer their own IE systems.
The systems themselves are frequently outdated, inconsistently written, confusingly specific, and poorly designed. Adding to the cognitive load of navigating these systems is the precise documentation a user is required to have on hand or upload. Filling out the application can take hours or days, and is often done under the emotional duress of financial need.
From a design business perspective, I was tasked with owning Deloitte’s IE design offerings in tandem to establishing a scratch built, government services-focused studio here in Austin. As I went out into the organization — state by state — to build an IE center of excellence, What I found was a series of uncoordinated, inconsistent project approaches. Research was duplicative, and a lack of cooperation or oversight across the projects meant that many were done in isolation.
Our approach
Using Kentucky’s Benefind system and Texas’ Your Texas Benefits, I started to consolidate past research among a dedicated internal team. Using a research synthesis technique called Modes and Mindsets allowed us to extrapolate requirements and behavior patterns, and to establish a baseline illustration of the benefits application and management experience.
A slide from the Your Texas Benefits research read-out detailing for the client what activities were performed and how those translated into actionable findings. (Author partially visible at right.)
Below, the list of activities that formed each mode category, and the mindsets observed.
Priority mindsets are highlighted in green, based on behavior patterns with the highest potential impact on project success metrics (reduction in case worker call volume, for example).
From that baseline, new projects could spend less of the scarce research budget on validating the general picture of a state’s benefits experience, and focus more on answering specific questions or understanding more specific user groups.
By analyzing data about a state’s benefits administration, the user experience could be optimized for one or more specific scenarios. In Kentucky, for example, 83% of benefits applications were men with a single dependent. By streamlining the online application process for those variables, we could better route more complex situations to call centers where the guidance of real time administrators meant the likelihood of error would be lower.
The results
Our research depicted a messy and disjointed application experience: one that frequently took place in distracting environments, on small screens, and over the course of days or weeks. Our solution focused on creating a forgiving, low effort, bite sized system that not only allowed users ample opportunities to save their progress for a later session, but also actively reminded them of those opportunities.
Examples of the mobile first, simplified Kentucky Benefind system. Content and design elements (such as progress bars) were explicitly designed to be soothing and supportive. Application sections were carefully divided to be as straightforward and quick to complete as possible.
A before and after view of the Kentucky Benefind redesign. Notable is the updated branding and accessibility improvements.
Our IE product implemented as Wisconsin's ACCESS system — in this case, a wholly in house crafted platform (rather than SalesForce or Servicenow).
Below, examples of the Wisconsin-specific design system.
By establishing a consistent, visually inviting, and learnable design system, we not only made an application that was easier to comprehend and use, but also one that was simpler to port across backend providers (in Kentucky’s case, SalesForce) and more efficient to maintain.
Above, the Deloitte GPS (government and public sector) studio I founded and led for nearly three years, circa 2020.
In addition to user metrics like improved application accuracy and reduced abandonment, IE provided Deloitte Austin with a consistent work stream with career development opportunities at multiple levels of complexity: from interns or staff maintaining design systems and delivering incremental updates, to seniors and leads extending the experience and conceiving new features or research areas.
