Heuristic Analysis

First, I completed a heuristic analysis on the current-state page using a mix of Nielson Norman's 10 Usability Heuristics and Abby Covert's Information Architecture Heuristics.

I chose to do a heuristic analysis for this project because of the time restraint for a quick turnaround, but I knew that I would find key insights on what needed to be addressed and prioritized by using these well tested sets of best practices.

The main heuristic violations I found were around visual hierarchy, content clarity, findability of information, and the overall usefulness of the content presented.

Ideation and Prototypes

After I documented all the heuristic violations found, I prioritized the findings to focus on the higher impact areas and mapped out the existing links to see what content was being used. Then, I constructed wireframes for quick and easy ideation that sketched out possibilities on how the content on the page could be structured.

During the wireframing and low fidelity prototyping stage, I looped in a benefits team member into the process to ensure that any priority content was present and that documents and links were up to date; if not, they were discarded - which reduced page bloat.

Final Page Designs

The existing single, long page was transformed into 4 distinct pages: a landing page to introduce the enrollment period opportunity, then three other pages that focused on a specific part of the benefits content  - FEHB, FEDVIP, and FSA.

I structured the pages in this way because employees were now able to focus on a single piece of the enrollment process at a time, but gave the ability to jump between parts of the process when needed.

These redesigned pages allowed for more concise and clear content through proper visual and typographical hierarchy along with links that had stronger information scent to resources - reducing cognitive load and improving information digestion. This shows the power that organization has in transforming existing content.

Results and Deliverables

After the enrollment period closed, I hosted a post-launch touchpoint with the benefits team contact. They expressed to me that there was a noticeable reduction of emails and Microsoft Teams messages from employees seeking help or guidance on their benefits enrollments after the redesign.

We took a look at prior years' email volume to measure against and discovered there was approximately a 60% reduction in email volume from prior enrollment years.

The reduction in email volume equated to hundreds of thousands of dollars in cost savings by reducing time for both the benefits team members and for agency employees - allowing them to invest that time into mission critical initiatives and goals.

Over a 5-year projection - assuming no further design refinements - the total cost savings would be well over $1 million dollars for the agency.