| Experience design – Cigna & Evernorth, 2021 – 2022

Challenge

Sales professionals relied on Excel sheets and manual communication to gather pharmacy information, track market trends, assess risks, and manage client requests for network models. This inefficient process caused anxiety and led to missed business opportunities.

My Role

As the Lead UX/UI Designer for Cigna partnered with Evernorth, I was challenged to design an intelligent solution that empowers businesses to create and optimize Cigna pharmacy network models. This solution not only meets users’ needs but also enhances their sense of accomplishment and well-being in their work, which is crucial for staying proactive and motivated.

To resolve this, I designed a streamlined experience featuring a role-based interface and data visualization dashboards, enabling experts to easily access relevant data and simulate network models to validate their assumptions risk-free. This solution enhanced the human experience, bringing smiles to many faces, eliminating fears of failing, and increasing efficiency by 95%, paving the way for future improvements and market expansion.

 

Uncovering the journey

 

Exploration

Of course, I started with exploration, and I have to admit, I love this phase of the journey and enjoy discovering uncharted territories. Following best practices and design thinking, I began by immersing myself in the environment, infusing questions (a lot of questions) into arranged interviews with SMEs and users to uncover pain points and motivations, diving deep into the current state. Learnings:

• Users need a seamless network modeling: Craft user-centric designs that facilitate the effortless adoption of new network offerings from ESI, reducing the implementation timeline by 3 months, ensuring users experience a smooth and timely transition to enhanced services.
• Users need an effortless automation: Design automated processes that introduce new networks across Cigna applications with minimal user input.
• Users need to customize pharmacy segments: Craft an intuitive interface that empowers users to easily navigate and select from tiered pharmacy networks, offering personalized options between preferred and non-preferred pharmacies with clear cost differences, enhancing their decision-making experience.
• Users need an intelligent and personalized experience: Design an intelligent framework that recommends up to three optimized pharmacy network options for clients based on specific business rules. This ensures a personalized experience that aligns with each client’s unique needs and preferences.

 

Systemization

Then, leveraging all insights from the exploration phase, I moved to the FUN part—sketching. I sketched layouts and usability patterns based on eye-tracking research, particularly the ‘F-shape’ scan pattern, to ensure the design aligned with natural user behaviors. The goal was to balance aesthetics with functionality, enabling clients to tailor networks effectively and provide the best pharmacy options within a flexible framework.

 

 

 

 

Iterations and Validations

After the initial sketches, converging and diverging design, I conducted multiple design iterations, fine-tuning both the interface and user flows to achieve a harmonious balance between simplicity and complexity (performed internal A/B testing to gather feedback, further refining the design based on real-world interactions).

 

 

 

Execution

To close the loop, I polished the final designs and refined the flows to not only meet product requirements but also make them pixel-perfect. I’m proficient with tools like Figma, Adobe XD, and Photoshop, so I prepared prototypes for developers to interact with and understand the flows. I also documented and annotated flows, designs, and UI components, ensuring they met accessibility guidelines and clearly communicated the design vision to the engineering team, with an emphasis on accuracy in UI development.