Delta Dental Ins.
A Redesign of the Delta Dental Insurance Provider Search Tool
Role
User Research, Prototyping, Wireframing, Usability Testing
Team
Joseph Wheatley, Nazli Kadur, Adrian Accad, Rydell Manahan, Michelle Li
Tools
Figma, Miro
Timeline
October 2021 - December 2021 (10 week project)
Project Overview
The Delta Dental Mentorship program is a 10-week UX/UI design immersive where design students at San Francisco State University collaborate and receive mentorship from researchers, designers, product managers, and developers from Delta Dental Insurance. This was my second mentorship program with Delta Dental and took initiative to lead a group of 4 students in optimizing the user's needs, wants, and goals through conducting a heuristic evaluation of the current platform, conduct user interviews, affinity mapping, paper prototyping, creating low to high fidelity wireframes, and usability testing.
The Problem
Many new or existing Delta Dental users are in need of dental assistance and wants to find a doctor best suited for their needs. The Delta Dental provider search tool is a great solution for this problem, although many members are finding it difficult to use due to the lack of refined filter search, non-interactive features, and lack luster user interface.
Currently, only 20% of the Provider Search Tool visitors use the filtering feature while 80% do not utilize the tool. The low percentage in usage of the filtering feature creates a problem in the user experience as the user’s needs are not fulfilled. This also lessens customer satisfaction and leads to an increased number of caller complaints to the customer service hotline for Delta Dental Insurance. They log into the web platform feeling confused and most do not receive the assistance they need.
A design challenge emerged…
How might we redesign the Provider Search experience, so that patients can find the Dentist that is right for their needs through refined filter search, a responsive interface, and maximized ease in use?
The Solution
To tackle this problem, our team decided to focus on the filter feature, map feature, and improve the user interface of the web application in order to create a more personal relationship within the application and the user. By having a more profound filter, the user will be able to truly establish a way to find the perfect dentist for their needs.
Initial problem discovery: Jakob Nielsens 10 Heuristic Evaluation on Current Platform
The 10 heuristics are general principles for interaction design. These heuristics evaluates the usability of a website or product. To begin collecting initial problems on the current state of the provider search tool, our team conducted the 10 heuristic evaluations on the website.
The 4 main heuristics we wanted to focus on were #2 Match between the system and real world, #3 User Control and Freedom, #4 Consistency and Standards, and #6 Recognition Rather Than Recall.
Heuristic #2: Match between the system and real world
The Problem
When on landing page, users are prompted to enter their network. Certain users might not understand what this means, such as new users of Delta Dental.
Proposed Solution
Adding a simple info icon “?” that will list the different networks and their descriptions will increase the users experience by reducing the confusion and stress of having to conduct the research themselves on what their own network is.
Heuristic #3: User control and freedom
The Problem
After the users decide to go back to the dentist list from the dentist’s profile they have to scroll endlessly until they find where they left off.
Proposed Solution
Users should be able to view the dentists information without having to leave the page and going back to the top of the page when searching for a dentist. Users can view the dentist information without being redirected to another page.
Heuristic #4: Consistency and standards
The Problem
The map feature does not follow the standards of the maps users are used to such as apple maps or google maps. There is no way to indicate the distance from user location. There is also no way of transportation shown on the map for users commuting.
Proposed Solution
The map feature should include ways of transportation for the user such as walking, biking, driving, or taking public transportation.
Heuristic #6: Recognition rather than recall
The Problem
The dentist previews are all identical to one another and users are not able to identify which card is for which dentist. Users should not have to remember the full name of a dentist in case of leaving the site prematurely and should have a clear way to distinguish each dentist preview.
Proposed Solution
Adding a simple profile photo of each dentist would solve the issue of recognition for the user. This will also create a much more personal experience within the dentist and the user.
Heuristic #6: Recognition rather than recall
The Problem
The refine search tool is not used by 20% of the online visitors. This is due to the fact that it currently has no recognizable level of important for the user flow of the product. It is simply a button on the top navigation bar with a lackluster UI design. Users are not motivated to navigate to this button along with the various filter refinements that are foreign to the user.
Proposed Solution
Making the filter a top priority for use by adding all of the possible filter refinements visible instead of a drop down menu will immediately catch the eye of the user for use when looking for a provider.
Hypothesis
Prioritizing the filter refinement feature in the top of the page, creating a more personal experience within the dentist + user, having an interactive map feature, and adding more visual emphasis on the interface of the product would ultimately increase the use of the provider search tool.
Therefore, it would also help users find a dentist that suits their needs and preferences which would result in less phone calls to the call center and lead to maximized customer satisfaction.
Preliminary Survey
To begin our research, our team created a preliminary survey for potential users that would use the provider search tool. To do this, our team created survey questions and imported these questions to a google survey document in order to maximize the data of information from the users.
Based on our surveys we found out that:
Reviews are the first thing users want to see when looking for a new dentist
Being able to see what a dentist specializes in is very important
Finding the nearest dentist from home is crucial to reduce the time to get to the dental location
The user would like to see if the dentist can accommodate their disability immediately
Being able to filter the time is essential to the users so they can schedule a dental visit in between meetings or classes
User Personas
Through our initial user surveys and data findings, we then created our user personas. The first persona is Aaron Lua, a college student who just moved to their college town in need of a new dentist. The second persona is Tara Harris, a pianist with a disability in need of a new dentist as well.
Ideation
Our team spent a lot of time conducting more research on our target users before ideation began. It was very important to us that our re-design of the platform served the different user groups while also making sure that the user experience was cohesive throughout using the features.
Through the process of creating an empathy map for the users, we had a much more clear idea of how to approach our initial wireframes. We began creating our crazy 8’s through Miro and wrote down everything we would think of building in the new re-design of the “find me a dentist” feature.
Some ideation questions our team had during this process were:
How might we create a more personal experience for the user so that users who have a difficult time finding a dentist can feel more at ease?
How might we help the users narrow down their search for the best dentist by implementing a more refined filter search?
How might we arrange the map feature that grants more visibility to alternative methods of transportation to a dental office?
How might we rearrange the dentist preview information hierarchy so the user is able to gather the information they need at a glance?
Initial Sketches
As a team, we first wanted to start the design exploration process by sketching out all of the different ideas we had to tackle the problems our user personas had such as changing the filter interface by adding it to the main navigation bar at the top of the page, changing the dentist preview interface and adding a reviews + profile photos of the dentists, adding an info button when having to choose your network when searching for a provider, and writing out interactions we wanted to implement into all of the wireframes when prototyping.
Delta Dental Emerald Design System
Before creating our first set of wireframes for the redesign of the provider search tool, we wanted to make sure to follow the design guidelines in the design system used by Delta Dental. Within the Emerald Design System, our team chose the components needed to complete the digital wireframes on Figma based on our sketches such as the drop down menus, radio buttons, and sliders.
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes/Prototype Iteration
From the research and ideation process, our team further tackled our design challenge by creating wireframes for the 3 main key problems we wanted to solve for the user: a refined map feature, an efficient filter feature, and a dentist preview feature with better informational hierarchy.
Usability Testing Evaluation
After completing the mid-fidelity wireframes, our team conducted a usability test to go through various user flows with our end-users. To do this we created testing scripts that we all used for our testing to have the most accurate feedback. Each member of the group tested 2 users each best matching our 2 user personas, with a total of 10 user tests.
Usability Testing Result Matrix
Testing Script
Suggested Improvements by users
Minimizing Dental Card Size.
Users who care about reviews were not very satisfied as there was no filter for reviews.
Hours filter should include numbered hours rather than the words morning, noon, afternoon and evening.
“Apply filters” button should be added because the users can not be sure if the filters selected were applied which also means that “live filtering” was not demonstrated well in our design.
Icon for accepting new patients needed for the dentists so that users can be sure that a certain dentist can accept new patients without having to call the office.
What Worked Well
Filters are easy to find.
Map and location features are helpful and time-saving, as the user does not have to go to a different app to figure out the transportation and travel time.
Choosing specialty in the beginning is helpful especially for people in pain who would like a quicker, and more narrowed downed search result.
Icons are easy to understand and helpful for quick scanning.
Final Prototype
Reflection
This was my second mentorship program with Delta Dental and with the knowledge and experience from my previous program, I wanted to lead our team to success. This leadership role taught me more about the end-to-end design process since I facilitated every step for my fellow students in our team and made sure that by the end of the program we were all immersed in the skills needed for a successful UX design project. By the end of the mentorship, my group and I presented our final design process and work to all the stakeholders of the product where we received great feedback and design critiques.
Throughout this process, I grew a profound love for leadership and instilled the value of the importance of great articulation within a team. The secret recipe for a successful team is being able to communicate collaboratively and effectively no matter the circumstances.