Annual Enrollment Observations

Issue

Every year the research team does observations of real people going through annual enrollment. A few clients (usually 3 or 4 companies a year) are randomly asked to participate in the observations. The companies then gathers around 4 to 6 of their employees for us to watch. These observations are crucial in understanding whether changes we’ve made throughout the year have made an impact on the enrollment experience. Many of the changes made during the year are in response to issues and points of friction we saw in previous observations. Even though these design changes are tested throughout the year, observations provide us with the ability to see people go through the entire flow, watch them make real-time decisions on their insurance options, and hear their overall thoughts about the enrollment process. Also, because our clients have the ability to personalize their platform, they do not always adhere to our design recommendations. These observations can also highlight what changes they should make on their personalized platform.

Process

While participants are being recruited by the employer, I spend time looking through the year’s projects that have anything to do with enrollment. However, because I’m over the Health & Insurance domain, a lot of my projects are regarding various areas of enrollment. Therefore, I can quickly pinpoint major issues that we tried solving for. Furthermore with testing and turn around times, we rarely have the opportunity to look at transitions that occur after our tested prototype. A few things we looked with this year’s observations include: understanding if people’s comprehension has increased with the use of introductory pages prior to making insurance selections, do people understand how much they will possibly pay with each insurance plan, do people find the suggested plans helpful or sway their mind make them think twice before selecting a plan and more. After identifying what interactions and sentiments I’m looking for, I then send my list to product owners for their approval and also to ask if they have any additional questions or interactions they are interested in learning more about.

Outcome

Every year, the observations highlight areas that we have improved on and what we could be doing better. This year we found that many of the changes we made throughout the year made for a much better enrollment experience. When asked to rate their experience, all three companies gave it an average of 5.5 out of 7

And furthermore, every year people always have positive sentiments about the benefits summary page. This page gives people a side by side comparison of what they are paying for their current coverage and coverage for the new year. While most people from all three companies said this page was extremely helpful, we noticed in observations that one person almost submitted their insurance options without opting into a medical plan. This showed us that the while the summary page is well-received, it could use either a reminder, indicator or making it more visible to users where they don’t have coverage, especially important options like medical insurance.