CHA Online.

CHA online is a service for pharmacies to file insurance claims, which guides users through a step-by-step process preventing manual errors and reducing handling time.

Image credit: National cancer institute via Unsplash

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ROLE

UX Design

User Research

LOCATION

Amsterdam, NL

2015

CASE SUMMARY

Clearing House Apothekers (CHA) is a company that handles insurance claims for pharmacies and insurance providers. With over ten years of experience, CHA was looking to upgrade the visual style of its core tool CHA Online to match their new brand identity.

Although the project initially focused on a visual upgrade, after conducting explorative user research we saw the opportunity to completely redesign the tool to better address pharmacists and insurance providers' needs.

Using SCRUM, we designed and implemented a brand new version of CHA-Online, which guides pharmacists through the claim handling process and uses data to reduce the risk of mistakes, which translates in less time and effort from the employees, speeding and easing claim approvals.

From a visual makeover to designing a user-centered digital experience.

With a new brand identity in place, Clearing House Apothekers (CHA) was looking to update the visual style of their core offering: CHA Online, a tool for pharmacies to file insurance claims. However, interviews with pharmacies and insurance providers uncovered that the opportunity to improve CHA Online extended beyond a visual refresh. On the other hand, a vision workshop with internal stakeholders revealed the company's drive to make a bold move that would strengthen its market position.

Vision session with stakeholders

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The tool had been on the market for almost ten years, and the different modules and functionalities were designed separately. This resulted in a fragmented, time-consuming experience for users who constantly shuffled from one module to another and had to duplicate their efforts to complete a claim filing. For CHA, it meant that their tool wasn't taking advantage of centralized data and current technology that allow efficient processing of the claims.

We reframed the challenge to redesign CHA Online to address the needs of different target audiences while updating the organization's front-end and backend infrastructures.

Understanding the user's mental model and seeking opportunities to drive value.

Conducting interviews with different target groups - individual pharmacies, chains, insurance providers, and internal CHA users - enabled us to identify the user's goals, priority tasks & blockers.

Moreover, we understood the fundamental differences between the mental models and motivations across target groups. For instance, pharmacies act thinking about the money to claim back, while insurers make decisions based on the amount to pay.

Synthesizing user research

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Workshop to understand technology dependencies

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Finding the balance between customisation and scalability.

The differences and similarities across groups drove us to create a modular concept where each target could be provided with the core functionalities that would support their tasks while addressing their motivations. A modular solution also provides the flexibility to offer new pricing packages to serve different customer types.

This move was backed by quantitative data from the current site's usage statistics, where it was visible which functionalities were most used by each target audience.

Detail design and development took place in parallel with two teams working side-by-side using SCRUM: one focused on design, user validation, and frontend implementation, and the other one focused on backend development.