Member shopping Simplified plans
Senior Product Designer
Humana, US
Customer Experience (CX)
Omnichannel
Digital Plan Shopping
Healthcare
Duration
7 months, 2025
Core Responsibilities
Product Design, Design Thinking, Ideation & Concept Development, UX Research & A/B Testing, Information Architecture, Content Strategy, Real-time KPI Validation
Overview
What are we trying to solve?
Medicare members face 30+ plan options per market, making it difficult to confidently understand, compare, and select a plan that fits their healthcare needs, costs, and coverage.
This complexity leads to decision paralysis, increased customer care dependency, and off-platform enrollment, breaking the end-to-end digital journey and driving higher operational costs for Humana.
My Role
Led the experience design and strategy to simplify Medicare plan selection by translating complex plan data into clear, comparable decision flows. I partnered cross-functionally to improve decision confidence, reduce customer care reliance, and keep users within the digital enrollment journey.
Users
Shoppers looking for a Medicare Plan
Opportunity
Reduce off-platform enrollment by creating a unified digital experience from plan discovery through enrollment.
HYPOTHESIS: User-centric Goal Driven
IF we can make plan exploration easier by identifying their core preferences and guide in decision making based on their needs.
THEN Medicare shoppers will feel confident selecting a plan digitally, BECAUSE they can clearly understand trade-offs between cost, coverage, and benefits without being overwhelmed by the number of options.
iDEATION - CONCEPT TESTING
Driving more context through research
We used a three-tiered benefit design framework to define a new way to shop for MA insurance.
The Shoppables are how plans in the Simplified Portfolio are differentiated. This study tests how users navigate their plans through various concepts. with Lo-fi designs.
Methodology
We built a moderated study concept testing, 45-60min sessions, with 2 sessions. Walked user through each session, ordered the concept randomly, and brand-blinded
Round 1 concept: Ranking anf Lifestyle Bundles
Round 2 concept: Build, Prioritize and Compare
Participants: 14
Round 1: 6 participants Round 2: 8 partcipants
Age: 60-80, mix of male and female
Currently enrolled in Medicare plans
Testing -Takeaways
Round 1
Prioritized Plans
Most participants showed preference for ranking their plan priorities in a bundle and did not resonate with the "bundle" confused them and showed a concern reaction.
Round 2
Disconnect
Many participants still had no clear concept of core benefits. And they were not calling them out or displaying a firm connection while shopping the plans
Round 1
Core benefits
Some participants displayed an understanding of what core benefits may entail, but misinterpreted them as benefits they need to choose or rank.
Round 2
Misinterpreatation
Key benefit "Shoppable" gave some participants some direction but most mixed misinterpreted if the benefits showed any connection while shopping plans
Round 2
No winner
There was no winning concept from this round, but lots of valuable insights were collected that inform a new blended concept idea.
Round 2
Trade-Offs
Most participant understood the ability to see how changes in their priority might change other aspects of a plan coverage.
Voice of customer
Reimagine Digital Shopping Experience
"Moments that matter" Across ecosystems
It was essential to align cross-functional teams across Humana’s ecosystem and partner closely with Voice of the Customer (VoC) insights that truly mattered to drive meaningful product change.
Within the Simplified Portfolio (SP), we introduced a guided decision flow that helped users navigate plan selection more efficiently—reducing effort, time, and cognitive load.
Vision alignment
This alignment clarified stakeholder expectations and defined success criteria for testing.
Our goal was to increase digital plan enrollment, validated through A/B testing of two distinct experience approaches across 12 U.S. markets—each addressing the same core problem while measuring impact on user confidence and enrollment behavior.
Guiding design principles
Before designing solutions, I anchored the project around four core principles: simplifying the shopping experience, reducing cognitive load, clearly communicating trade-offs, and enabling bespoke navigation flows. These principles guided how I framed discovery, structured information, and prioritized personalization and progressive disclosure.
Every concept decision from plan descriptions and CTAs to comparison logic and navigation patterns was evaluated against these principles to ensure users could explore plans easily, understand differences quickly, and move confidently toward enrollment without unnecessary friction.
But.. How did we get to these two concepts ?
These two concepts emerged from careful observation of user behavior and psychology during Medicare plan shopping. User research revealed three critical needs: guidance through the selection process, upfront visibility of doctor/drug coverage to understand costs and benefits, and confidence that their chosen plan truly meets their healthcare needs.
Learn more.. what make these concepts different.
All Plans — Multi-Step Guided Flow
A guided, multi-screen experience that walks users through plan selection step by step
Plan cards expand on “View more,” enabling quick comparison of core benefits through sliding interactions
42% of users preferred the structured, step-by-step guidance with detailed information presented upfront
Doctors and Drugs were the top decision drivers and surfaced early in the experience.
Real-time comparisons reflected cost, coverage, and benefits based on user priorities.
Bento — Unified Single-Page Experience
A single-page, guided experience designed to keep users in context throughout plan exploration
Plan details revealed through slide-out drawers, allowing deeper exploration without page transitions
37% of users preferred the continuous, in-page guidance with access to detailed information
Doctors and Drugs were the top decision drivers and surfaced early in the experience.
Real-time comparisons reflected cost, coverage, and benefits based on user priorities.
Concept Prototyping
Bringing Concepts to Life
I designed by collaborating closely with product managers, content strategists, UX research and engineers, compliance. The work underwent rigorous cross-functional design reviews and stakeholder evaluations to ensure alignment, feasibility, and scalability. and tested interactive prototypes through two unmoderated research studies with total 15 participants using usertesting.
DevMode
Working with the Super-heros (Dev Team)
I collaborate closely with the development team through sprint-based workflows. Product Owners define sprint stories and acceptance criteria, and I translate those requirements into Figma designs, linking annotated designs directly to stories to ensure clarity, alignment, and smooth implementation.
Hi-Fi prototypes: Design Chellenges
0K
0K
Enrolled
69.6K visitors on
and 4.5K enrolled for
plan using SP
0%
0%
Conversion Rate
Compared to 4.1% for controlled market
0%
0%
Concept winner
"All plan" tested higher than Bento.
Summary
This project reinforced that confidence in complex, regulated environments. I learned how to balance compliance, accessibility, and clarity while guiding members through high-stakes and contributing in their care making decisions.
Concept testing revealed that All Plans performed better across the end-to-end journey, while Bento drove stronger engagement by 15% at the enrollment stage. These insights informed a new hybrid direction combining the structured guidance of All Plans with the focused interactions of Bento, that further improves the Medicare plan shopping experience.
Use Zipcode 80001 for concept A and 22101 Concept B
ndhotr20@gmail.com
E-mail
Home
About me
Expertise
Project
Contact me
Video
@nikita.dhotre_2025
Private Policy
Digital Experience