user research / ux design / ui design / user testing
Overview: The myCT Health and Human Services (HHS) experience needed to enable residents to more easily discover, apply to, enroll in, and maintain benefits through one unified portal. We wanted to support the state in expanding access to services and delivering those benefits more efficiently, empathetically, and equitably. We did this by considering the whole person and addressing the needs and obstacles they face beyond individual programs. The platform launched to the public in 2023 with an excess of 1 million visits per month.
We performed research focusing on four key groups. Beginning with CT stakeholders to understand what success looks like from their viewpoint and what any potential obstacles may be. Then we visited DSS locations on-site to speak with Staff to understand their frustrations with the current state and what workarounds they employ just to get things done. While on-site we also did in-person intercepts with residents, as well as phone observations of them interacting with staff. We paired this with remote interviews to get an immersive understanding of residents’ motivations, obstacles, and needs to identify key moments in their experience to help us focus the design effort. While in the field we also met with community members — specifically the staff and clients of Alliance CAA to learn more about their experience guiding residents through these processes and gain more visibility into the ‘real’ process that exists beyond the documented one.
We synthesized the users’ needs and pain points into experience pillars which we ensured were reflected in the design. Residents needed a trusted place to start, one that is relevant to them and helped them understand what they needed to do now and next using clear and direct language and gets them to places they needed to take action. By the end of the first 12 weeks we had created screens for the portals MVP containing all the features aligned on with the state. The design system was created to be identical in both salesforce and sitecore, helping to unify the experience for users. During the 10 month build phase we fleshed out edge cases and tested the pre-screener with real users before going live in December of 2023.
The design reduced the number of accounts an individual would need to enroll in and maintain, in turn reducing the number of times they would need to provide the same information to various places. It aims to help increase enrollment in the most valued under enrolled programs like WIC and LIHEAP, while also reducing churn in SNAP. Residents are getting more of the information they need online which has reduced the call volume to the DSS help line.
My role: I was the design lead for the MVP creative sprints, responsible for overseeing the creation of the core features for the experience including all the dev ready mockups. I led the team of 3 UX designers while also pairing with a team of service designers to conduct field research and synthesize the findings into tangible outputs to inform the design. I helped develop the client relationship ensuring they were satisfied with the outputs and that our team worked seamlessly with their team.
