Delta Dental - Cost Estimator
Building trust with insurance members — demystifying dental costs
Overview
Delta Dental provides insurance for over 80 million people in America and owns the largest market share in the dental insurance marketplace. DDINs mission is to provide access to quality care to improve the health of its members and their families.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Researcher
Deliverables
Research
User Interviews
Feature Prioritization
Personas
User Flows
Concepts
Wireframes
Prototype
Evaluative Research
Responsive Web Design
The Challenge
Delta Dental needed to improve its legacy Cost Estimation tool, which was originally implemented without a designer in 2014. The legacy tool was difficult to locate and deeply truncated within the Enrollee Self-Service Portal. The experience logic and functionality were sub-optimal — frequently returned technical server issues, and displayed inaccurate information and costs for dental treatments.
This was a critical business problem — as the only subsequent resolution usually required our members and or their dental providers to call the Customer Contact Center.
42% of customer call volume is around understanding dental cost implications
Over 72% of claims processing costs indicated that members insured with PPO plans were receiving treatments with providers out-of-network
Ultimately costing more for the company and members having to pay out-of-pocket costs for dental procedure treatments due to the fact that they were not in-network associated with their group or plan
The Solution
To revamp and modernize the legacy Cost Estimator tool
Improve Cost Estimator feature discoverability and usability
Understand the technical constraints with back-end data and implementation solutions around those limitations
Mobilize the user experience
1
Discover
Since no prior user research was conducted throughout the implementation of the legacy feature — the first step was evaluating the legacy Cost Estimator tool’s experience. I conducted a heuristic evaluation to uncover the current usability and functionality problems - then validated my assumptions through testing with our members to further inform how we can improve this feature.
Step 1 - Unpack the brief and connect with PMs, Engs, and SMEs
Step 2 - Conduct a heuristic evaluation on the legacy Cost Estimator
Step 3 - Recruit and plan usability testing to validate assumptions and uncover pain points and opportunities
I conducted a heuristic evaluation based on the general rules of thumb to measure the usability of the current Cost Estimator tool within the legacy ESS (Enrollee Self-Service) Portal.
This consisted of independent walk-throughs, reporting issues, and potential opportunities.
The findings were evaluated against Neilson Normans 10 usability heuristics below:
“First, you must diagnose the problem to prescribe the best design medicine.”
Legacy tool - heuristic and usability evaluation
User Research
Objectives:
The aim is to understand how members are currently using this tool and valid/invalidate assumptions noted in my heuristics evaluation to uncover:
What’s working, what’s not working?
What are the pain points and opportunities?
What are their mental models of how this feature should function?
Are we meeting their expectations - if not, why/where, and how can this be improved?
Research planning and discussion guide was then developed to gather insights.
Research methodology: 1:1 moderated interviews, remote moderated 1:1 qualitative + usability evaluative study, 45 mins per session, 6 participants
Recruitment criteria :
Delta Dental PPO members with who manage their own insurance or their family members insurance.
Participants were ask to perform the following tasks while speaking aloud their thought process:
Task 1: [As a returning member] You want to learn about the cost for a dental filling for an upcoming visit. How would you go about that on this portal?
Task 2: Learn about the cost for a dental check up for an upcoming visit.
Insights and Findings
After conducting and wrapping up all research sessions, I collected and analyzed all the notes from my User Research Associate and Product partners from the observation sessions. Synthesizing the key user pain point and began ideating on design solutions to enhance the current user experience.
01 - SELECT PROCEDURE PAGE
02 - PROCEDURE OPTIONS / DETAIL PAGE
03 - COST ESTIMATE RESULTS
04 - SELECT / CHANGE DENTISTS
2
Define
In the next phase, drawing a box around what designs need to be done and optimizing the experience flow and functionality based on the defined healthcare behavioral archetypes
Designing experiences with healthcare behavioral archetypes in mind
Based on surveys and research, I defined the top 5 behavioral archetypes to keep top-of-mind during this phase of the process as the north star.
Through identifying user pain points, needs, their mental models ensures the implementation of a targeted and holistic user-centric approach in the redesign.
Evaluating and optimizing the user flow
After evaluating the existing experience within the legacy portal, it wasn’t a surprise that members were having major issues with the findability of where to locate how they would attain a cost estimate for an upcoming treatment.
To find the page to get a cost estimate, members had to navigate several pages down, starting from “Plan Benefits”. Through speaking with our members during our research sessions, we learned that “Plan Benefits” want not the best starting point and did not align with their mental models of how they would go about finding cost estimation details.
Another critical concern we learned — once members were able to successfully get to the “Cost Estimate Results” page, if they wanted to inquire another cost estimate for a new procedure, they would be directed all the way back to the starting point of the navigation flow once again. This caused frustration and perception that the system/Delta Dental has a lack of empathy for their time.
Next, I began concepting and thinking through how might the navigation and experience be simplified and present a more succinct and intuitive experience that would better align with member’s mental models and thought processes.
To improve the ux, I was able to establish a solution that would improve the findabilty and the ux to guide members to their end goal through progressive disclosure.
To avoid over burdening members, the new user flow will only show them what they need to know at that time to make confident decisions/actions.
Ultimately by embedding sub-pages where it makes sense, reduced the complexity of the legacy experience – ensuring members of both novice and expert levels can successfully find cost results.
Reduction from 10 pages to 4 pages in the ux and implementing an intuitive way for new searches.
3
Design
Design explorations from wireframes, ideations, prototyping, testing, through to finalize high-fidelity designs
Select Procedure
Procedure Options / Details
* Note: For the purpose of this build, dummy-data was utilized for this artifact for simulation purposes only. The research findings were translated and implemented to the subsequent design iteration.Prototype + Testing
TECHNOLOGIES: REACT, SAAS, JAVASCRIPT, CSS, HTML
In collaboration with our product partners, we honed on the intended logic, feasibility, and functionality for the new and improved Cost Estimator tool. Working alongside with our UI Technologist, we built an interactive React prototype as an evaluative stimuli for our usability + comprehension testing with members.
Task 1: Try to attain the the cost details for a front tooth filling.
Task 2: Find the lowest out-of-pocket cost for a dental check-up.
Outcomes
Business Impact:
The MVP for the redesign of the Cost Estimator tool successfully shipped in January 2023 with the help of our wonderful development and QA team working along with product partners to implement this feature . As a result, the Marketing business stakeholders were delighted with the outcomes with our members utilizing in -network dental practices — ultimately impacting the enterprise’s revenue stream.
35%
Call volume reduction to Customer Representative Centers around cost estimation details
100%
Increased optimization of the Cost Estimator tool’s findabilty and usability from MVP launch
User Impact:
28%
Conversation rate increase from member’s going into dental facilities for dental procedures and treatments
“ I’m glad I can finally take the guessing game out of going to see the dentist!”
Looking ahead
Since the MVP redesign had limitations on the types of procedure treatment cost calculations it can successfully return — the next steps to enhance this tool would be for members to have a more robust cost calculations to service a broader range of treatment plans and types.
Further explorations in the future around how member's perceive and understand the Cost Details and Summary of the typical cost breakdown component would be necessary to benefit their overall experience and understanding of convoluted dental insurance nomenclature and processes.