CASE STUDY

Optimity Creates Mobile Ecosystem Vision for 5-Million-Member Health Plan

SERVICES

Innovation Strategy and New Venture Development

Customer Experience & Design

THE CHALLENGE

Holistic product strategy needed to ensure growth after mobile app launch

Our client, a major federal health payer with more than 5 million members, launched an initiative to develop its product strategy and roadmap for its mobile app and mobile ecosystem.

A year prior, Optimity led the design and development of the health plan’s MVP mobile app on both the iOS and Android platforms, with MVP functionality that leveraged vendor capabilities, services and data and allowed members to take care of basic self-service needs on-the-go. Throughout that year, additional features were added to increase member engagement and drive greater conversion of key member and business tasks, leading to app usage metrics that far exceeded the client’s expectations.

Now, our client was looking to envision a holistic mobile product strategy that would align to the health plan’s corporate strategy, meet governmental oversight requirements, support its internal stakeholders, and make it easier for members to access their benefits and manage their healthcare needs on-the-go. The health plan also wanted to ensure its mobility ecosystem would offer consumer differentiation and operational advantages over the competition

Our client was looking to envision a holistic mobile product strategy that would align to the health plan’s corporate strategy and make it easier for members to access their benefits and manage their healthcare needs on-the-go.

OUR SOLUTION

Design Thinking approach creates product roadmap for mobile ecosystem

As a key strategic partner for the client, Optimity led a multi-phase experience design process that incorporated Design Thinking methods (a human-centered, iterative methodology) to co-design the vision for a holistic mobile app experience.

We kicked off the initiative with Collective Intelligence sessions with client leadership and business owners to define the problems to solve, identify target audiences and their motivations and behaviors, and build consensus on priority solutions for research and exploration.

In an extensive research and exploration phase, Optimity completed a competitive landscape analysis to identify opportunities for growth and differentiation, and reviewed metrics to examine current engagement and usage within the core app and the member portal website. Member research included in-depth interviews and focus group sessions with active users to understand members’ expectations of the mobile experience, explore product fit, and validate the defined member goals.

We also conducted a Service Design Workshop to validate business goals for the mobile app product, co-design journey maps to visualize key experiences, and construct a research-based ideal mobile customer experience.

Through these member and business inputs, we co-designed the product roadmap of key mobile experiences and capabilities for the health plan to build into its digital experience throughout the next 18 months.

Optimity also established guidelines and frameworks to support the full mobile ecosystem:

Promotion plan for marketing of the app and increasing member engagement with new features
Technology capabilities and enablers needed to deliver upon strategy and achieve business objectives
Measurement approach for monitoring key metrics, app store reviews, social media, adoption funnels, and gathering ongoing feedback to guide improvements
Operations plan to support members with app issues and be proactive and responsive

After the development of the product strategy and roadmap, we facilitated additional workshops with business stakeholders to socialize the strategy, solicit feedback and promote support for long-term buy-in.