SMI

CHALLENGE

What if a high-trust community of people could fund each other's medical bills and share unique messages of support?

Together with a team of designers, engineers, and product managers at Samaritin Ministries International, I led design research efforts and helped craft the vision and early feature concepts of their flagship mobile app. The mobile app was built alongside a web app which added extra complexity to the project and required a high level of coordination across design and dev teams. Part of what made this project such a fun challenge was balancing the company's need to provide a space for authentic connection between users along with privacy and legal constraints that govern personal healthcare data.

SOLUTION

Healthshare business model

As a health-sharing company, SMI is bound by rules and regulations that don't apply to traditional insurance companies. Specifically, users cannot auto-pay their monthly premiums like traditional insurance. Instead, users must be able to send their membership dues manually (i.e. by clicking a button, or in some other fashion). Members can also chat with those who they have supported in the past.

CHALLENGE

Role and responsibilities

Design lead
UX strategy
Business analyst
Concept development
Visiontype creation
UX research
Prototype development

At SMI, users must be able to send their membership dues manually (i.e. by clicking a button, or in some other fashion). Members can also chat with those who they have supported in the past.

Early Ideation & Co-creation Workshop: Early in the project, we sat down with members to better understand pain-points, jobs-to-be-done, insights and opinions about their legacy platform.

Design Principles: Since we were dealing with personal healthcare data while also allowing members to connect with one another, I placed our design principles on a spectrum in order to determine where to strike the right balance.

Business Model Discovery: One new business opportunity I uncovered was the idea of a dedicated group-prayer feature that could be used as a standalone app for non-members interested in joining the community.

Remote Team Ideation: I led our team in multiple ideations session where we leveraged tools such as Invision's Freehand to generate feature concepts that addressed key pain-points.

Early Information Architecture Diagram: While fleshing out an early IA diagram, I discovered an opportunity to connect the monthly sharing workflow with a private chat feature (micro-connection) and a global map view of all member connections (macro).

Detailed Sitemap: View of an early sitemap I created to help developers get a head start building known, essential parts of the app.

Sitemap (Zoom-in): I invisioned connecting the sharing workflow with the global map view that displayed all of a member's respective connections as a way of humanizing the transactional aspect of the product experience.

Taxonomy: Members would be migrating from the legacy platform to the new mobile app which presented a challenge and opportunity. This early taxonomy I outlined helped create a shared language with the team around the bill payment process.

Cross-Platform Notification Rules: This is an early diagram I created with SMI's head of design and product manager to show the relationship between notifications (email and push) with different states in the bill management section of the app.

Parallel Confluence Structure: I spearheaded the creation of custom Confluence templates that captured both mobile and web design work to serve as a source-of-truth. This helped engineers on both sides (mobile and desktop) know where to find the latest design work for each sprint.

Adobe XD File Structure: I spearheaded the organization of web and mobile design work in Adobe XD Cloud. This image shows screens for bill management, one of the most complex and sensitive parts of the app.

Hi-fi Screens: Examples of some high-fidelity mobile screens used in an early release. Illustrations from the client's creative department were used for the empty states.

Swipe-to-share Prototype: I worked with the team to iterate on the design of a swiping gesture to make the monthly payment less transactional and more human. The goal: to encourage members to pause, reflect, and empathize with the member before sending financial support.

Map Experience: I designed this map experience as a way of creating a mini social network within the product experience. Member connections appeared on the map screen and clicking on a profile allowed members to chat with others and provide words of support as they navigated their healthcare journey.

Mark Balance Paid: Since members paid providers the remaining balance of their medical bills outside of the app, I designed and developed a workflow that allowed members to mark bills as fully-paid. This system allowed members to track open and closed bills while also providing valuable backend user data for SMI.

Crowdfunding healthcare payments for over 10,000 families.