VizHealth

Overview

I served as lead data analyst in four-person team creating an interactive tool for comparing health care plans. I cleaned and analyzed a large dataset from the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services and assisted in creating an interactive map comparing healthcare plans between states using Tableau and Figma.

The United States Healthcare System is notoriously convoluted and oftentimes, the citizens with the least experience have the largest need for affordable care. Our goal was to create a tool that could help empower users who are inexperienced with the current healthcare system, and give them a means to compare plans at both a high level between states, and then in a more detailed view between individual insurance plans. 

The crux of this tool is the ability to visualize complicated and obscure information such as monthly premium variances, copayments, deductibles, co-insurance, and plan types in the most accessible way possible for a general audience. An ideal outcome would be a tool that an 18 year old could use to compare state plans before choosing an out of state college, but also could be used by a 30 year old, who had just lost their job, to find similar plans in price and coverage to the plan they just lost. Healthcare is a huge existential anxiety amongst many Americans, and we would like to create something that can make this topic easier to approach.

Goals of Vizhealth

● Enhance users’ understanding of U.S. health insurance market for the year of 2020

● Communicate valuable insights from our visual data analysis to target audience

● Spark users’ interests in the topic and data exploration

Summary

1) To give users a contextual overview, the average price distribution per state in United States is illustrated through the hexagon map

a) to first reduce the initial cognitive load,

b) and provide most relevant price information at the very beginning.

2) Then filters are provided and always fixed on the top to enable users to remove extraneous data based on desired attributes

3) Tooltips on the charts provide detailed information on demand. It gives the user control of the data and the ability to further explore without cluttering the screen.

4) When user selects an element, it would be highlighted, and related data will be extracted and shown on the stats cards on the side of the chart.

In `plan-based view` section, a spider chart is used to compare the insurance attributes among the top 3 cheapest plans based on selected filters.

Hopefully, in the end, users would have a general understanding of the price distribution, and find one insurance plan that fits their need.

Other than the main user flow,

● We worked on the system feedback. Such that a spinner and the name of the loading components will show up after users have performed certain actions.

● Also, based on previous users’ feedback, we tried to add explanations for jargons inside of tooltip, such as ‘deductible and copayments’.

Demo Video

If you are interested in seeing the tool in action, here is a brief demo we created!

Process: Ideation, Iteration, Usability Testing

If you are interested in the technical details regarding our method and workflow, head on over to this link!

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