Anthem Reimagined
A cast study in bringing Anthem.com into the modern age with a clean, modern, responsive site.
The problem(s) we were solving
In 2014, Wellpoint was rebranding itself as Anthem. Additionally, they were taking steps to improve their digital presence, particularly since their membership had grown due to the ACA changes.
Their site at the time was not responsive, had a very dated design, and, based on user feedback, access to information and ability to complete tasks was frustrating.
Our challenge was to create a vision for a new Anthem.com that reflected a modern, sophisticated but user-friendly site that worked across devices. Additionally, while brand styles were in flux, we used this opportunity to prove out some directions.
The audience
Because we serviced every type of customer, our audience was very broad. Every adult age group, every level of tech savviness, every income level. We mitigated this by developing personas that reflected typical characteristics across segments.
Our secondary audience, though, was the internal leadership team. For this exercise, we needed to win over those who weren’t entirely familiar with the digital space.
My role
In my role as Creative Director, I led the team through each step of the design process, starting with lots of discovery (research, interviews, competitive analysis) through ideation, prototyping and testing. Collectively we developed a strong POC used to obtain executive approval and kick off individual agile sprints.
Our approach
Overall, we followed the standard Design Thinking process. We gathered user feedback through moderated sessions and verbatims from ForeSee, internal stakeholder feedback through surveys and interviews, and evaluated external influences such as competitor sites/apps.
Once we understood the top tasks and problem areas, we were able to draft and prioritize a list of features we wanted to include in MVP.
We learned that, for the top tasks a user wants to perform (view claims/EOB/authorizations, retrieve ID card, understand coverage info, pay bills,) the overall site navigation was too confusing, the data was overwhelming and because different areas of the site looked and behaved differently, users struggled to complete tasks.
Style explorations
While we were gathering user and stakeholder feedback, we did some explorations on overall style. The new brand was being developed by another group and we wanted to ensure that digital was considered. By socializing these, we also got a sense of where the broader group wanted to take the new site designs.
Design Workshop
The pinnacle of the design process was pulling together my distributed team into big room, along with white boards, Post-Its, Sharpies, pens, pencils, dot stickers, and lots of snacks to distill all of what we’d learned in the Discovery phase, into an elegant solution.
First, we agreed on design principles…
Before getting into design, we identified the design principles we needed to follow to make the site a success. We broke it into 3 inter-related categories: How the new design should function, how users should feel when they use it and ultimately how Anthem would be perceived.
Then, we sketched…
We sketched individually, then shared. Then we sketched in small groups, and shared. Then we determined which felt like they best addressed the problems we had identified, and those ideas made it to the next step.
Then, we comp’d it all up.
You can see from the before and after that we were able to create a more visually appealing, clutter-free, less overwhelming experience in both the public and member areas.
Validate and refine
The Workshop marked a monumental shift in the overall approach to the design of the site. From there, we continued to iterate, introducing a lighter, more personal feel.
