IH Health Extras

Overview

Problem

After years of relying solely on purchase receipts to track their benefits, many Independent Health members grew frustrated by the lack of a better solution — especially when it came to two key programs: Health Extras and Nutrition Benefits.

In addition to growing member frustration, the timing of this project posed a major challenge — it was introduced as a last-minute feature, giving me and the engineering team just two month to deliver a solution. With my designs, I was able to create reusable design comments for both

The Goal

My goal was to create, design and user-test two features within two months that would enable members to track, manage, and update their Health Extras and Nutrition Benefits — all within Independent Health's existing member portal and in alignment with our design system.

My Team & My Contribution

My team composed of me, a UX/UI Designer, two Software Engineers, a Product Manager, and a Data Analyst. Our ultimate goal was to deliver these two features by the current PI in our Agile release train.

My Role

Lead UX/UI Designer

Timeline

2 Months

My Company

Independent Health Association

Status

Implemented and Live

Research & Alignment

User Research

Given the tight project timeline and limited access to real-time data, I turned to a backlog of customer complaints to guide my research and design process. Many member complained about how cumbersome it was to track their benefits — many had to call in just to check their rewards. These insights played a key role in shaping my design decisions and helped me prioritize the most critical elements for the new benefits page

Data Cleanup

Although all data related to member benefits — such as monetary balances and qualifying transactions — was being tracked on the backend, much of it wasn't relevant or useful to members. The information was cluttered and overwhelming.

To address this, I collaborated closely with a data analyst and my product manager to determine which data points were essential for members to see and which could be omitted for a cleaner, more focused experience.

Making Backend Data Clear and Actionable for Members

Designs

No more calls or receipts to track benefits

Users can now visit the redesigned dashboard for an at-a-glance view of spending, remaining balance, and benefit explanation.

Transparency in spending

The redesigned Activity page addresses outdated information by providing a clear, real-time view of every purchase and claim.

Replacing lost cards without paperwork

The newly designed on-click request feature saves users time and reduces the business paper costs.

Highlight Reel - Live in Production

The video below hightlights the designs that were implemented and currently live in production. It also shows the responsiveness of the design/page.

Design System

Goal

Independent Health has a robust design system that all designers follow to ensure consistency across products. As part of a small, centralized design team, my team and I are responsible for maintaining, updating, and expanding the system as needed. Our goal is to promote the reuse of existing components when building new features, ensuring a familiar and seamless experience for users. The design system also accelerates development by reducing engineering effort, ultimately shortening the time it takes to ship and implement new features.

Snippet of Added Components

NFR's & Storybook

As part of this project, I created non-functional requirements (NFRs) to guide the engineering team during development. These NFRs helped set expectations to engineers around performance, pixel spacing, responsivness, typography, and interaction.

Below is a snippet of what I shared with engineers for this project. After development, the components were published to Storybook, allowing me to review, test, and approve them before they were integrated into our component libary and used for features.

Extending Value: New Feature, Same Building Blocks

User Testing

Validation is Key

While I didn't have direct access to our members for user testing, I conducted eight validation sessions with colleagues who are also Independent Health members. These sessions surfaced valuable insights — one key piece of feedback was the importance of easily requesting a new card, which turned out to be a much more common use case than I initially anticipated.

As a result, I added an entirely new section to the design dedicated to requesting and tracking replacement cards. Since these sessions took place before development began, I was able to make these changes seamlessly.

Outcomes

500k+

Members have benefitted

93%

Satisfactory rate since launch

$400k+

Estimated savings from benefit-related support calls

If I Had More Time

If I had more time, I would conduct true user validation with existing Independent Health members—especially those who frequently use Health Extras or Nutrition Benefits—to directly observe their pain points and refine interactions like benefit breakdowns, alerting low balances, and contextual guidance within the portal. This could enhance usability, boost satisfaction beyond 93 %, and further reduce support call volumes. one key piece of feedback was the importance of easily requesting a new card, which turned out to be a much more common use case than I initially anticipated.