VizHealth Methods and Procedures

Related Work and Ideation

Something that we found surprising when beginning this project was the lack of existing tools to compare plans and healthcare. No visual or interactive tools were available to the general public and plan information was often strictly limited to federal and state websites. In order to compare plans, users are required to enter in highly personal information proving you lived in a certain state. In addition, users are required to create accounts using an email address and certain sites even required social security information and personal addresses.

Even after completing all these additional steps, the plans were laid out by text and generally one or two at a time. There were also no methods of comparison between plans at a high level. You could organize them based on filters such as price and coverage, but with how difficult it was to even see the plans in the first place, our feeling was that many users would feel intimidated and reluctant to proceed. In other words, because the initial forms were so long and felt like a breach of privacy, users would not feel comfortable with even gaining access to the traditional marketplace websites.

Personas

Moving to our personas, the intended users were 18-30 years old and low to middle class.

This demographic was chosen based on three primary reasons.

1. Most young adults start college at the age of 18, and may move to a state with a significantly different healthcare system than their home state, requiring them to get an insurance with better coverage in their particular state (compared to their parent's coverage).

2. Many young professionals are completely reliant on their employer for health insurance, and if they are fired or need to leave their job for any particular reason, they will be without insurance.

3. We target low to middle class as upper class young adults often rely on their parents for funding their insurance and have little personal involvement in the process.