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Case Study
Guidewell Connect and Florida Blue Agents Portal
The problem with the existing portal used by agents and agencies that sell the application system’s medical plans offered by Guidewell Connect is that it is not very user-friendly to create proposals. It does not have features that allow agents to save non-compromising information from their clients to use in future sales.
Guidewell Connect offers this application to a dozen companies in the Blue Cross and Blue Shield network, including Florida Blue, the largest health company in Florida.
The Problem
The challenge of visualizing a messing flow
Before starting to visualize my ideas, my priorities were to visually create the complete content of the portal by printing all the pages to identify page by page where the flaws and the most revealing functionalities are. Armed with several stick note pads, I identified usability and visual defects in each page and noted those elements that did not need changes, but I put a special interest where improvements were needed.
After I identified all defects, flows, and good features in the flow, I made an activity diagram (using pencil and paper) to help me understand the entire flow of this portal. However, before starting to put ideas to improve the application, I did an investigation of features used by the competition that were not in this application. And this was the next step I took.
Starting Point of the Redesign
The Competitors Analysis
The competitors’ analysis was not easy to do, I did not have the means to access the applications used by the agents of the competition. Fortunately, after doing intensive research online, I was able to find more than 30 features that I had listed.
I compared all features of my list to the samples collected from each competitor during my research. This helps me to improve the Guidewell Connect Agents portal. Then, I divided my features comparations into sections which were Site Process and Usability (to improve the User experience of the application), Creating Quotes or Proposal, Customers/Prospect Profile (to improve the usability and data info of their agents’ clients), Customers/Prospects List and Plans display.
Competitors analysis
Features Rating
The Competitor Analysis also has a section where I create a rating of the existing Guidewell Connect Agent Portal and the list of features selected to improve the user experience and usability in the redesign.
The analysis also included the samples from each competitor used to create this analysis and it ended with a set of diagrams showing where to introduce the chosen features in the idealization of the redesign.
Competitors Analysis Recommendation
Diagrams of features (Sample)
The Competitors Analysis concluded by showing several diagrams to be used in the idealization process. These diagrams are my initial thoughts to be centered around the wireframes of the design consents.
Building a proposal
Activity Diagram sample
My visually motivated activity diagrams help me and others to understand how users interact with the app, they show the different paths that the agents take to complete a task or achieve a goal to create a proposal o sell their health plans. This is a key tool that I use to create a superior user experience for the user and meet the efficiency of the users when working on the final app.
Wireframes
Design Consent samples
I created ten different design consents in low fidelity wireframes, and out of these wireframes, I created six design consents using high fidelity wireframes that eventually were used to create the final design.
