Medical Mutual
Uplifting the organization and improving the member experience
In early 2022, my G2O team and I embarked on a partnership with Medical Mutual that has grown over the last two years and is still going strong.
​
At the start of the engagement, Medical Mutual's request was straightforward: "Partner with us to strengthen and grow our UX practice." Their product teams were falling behind on deadlines and lacked the UX competencies to successfully deliver exceptional digital experiences.
​
G2O was hired to complete overdue UX work for critical product features while using industry-leading design practices and methods.
These practices would then be codified and taught to the current team, becoming the standard for good UX within Medical Mutual.
OhioHealth
Reimagining Healthcare
In early 2016, OhioHealth came to us with a simple mission; Change the face of healthcare. To do this we set out to create an innovative product group that would combine the creativity within Marketing with the product development ability within Information Solutions​.
UX Didn't exist within these teams so my team and I had to start from the ground up and show the newly formed team how to collaborate and work with design in order to get products into market with speed.
As we Started
During the engagement, our team quickly uncovered deep-rooted challenges throughout product development, including a lack of requirements, unclear roles and responsibilities, and an undefined vision for value and features.
​
Medical Mutual's commitment to becoming more customer-centric prompted G2O to adjust and create embedded teams with expertise not only in UX but also in Product Management, Research, and Service Design. This pivot brought much-needed capabilities to the product teams and helped us infuse our best practices into the CX, UX operations, and product lifecycle.
​
The team focused on three key areas:
​
01/ Product Improvements: Collaborating with product teams to design better experiences for the Member Experience App (MXA) and the Group Member Portal (MED).
02/Research and Insights: Defining the customer journey and answering critical questions through both generative and evaluative research.
03/UX Team Uplift: Establishing a design system, defining roles and identifying skill gaps, and recommending key hires to build out the the team.
01/Product improvements
The team hit the ground running, quickly learned the Medical Mutual’s business, and built a UX process that dovetailed into Product and Development workflows
UX Process Establishment & Backlog Clearance
We immediately set out to establish a UX process that fit into the development cycle and cleared out the overdue backlog items that were holding up product development.
Consistent and High-quality Design Standards
We created reusable design components to efficiently build and share hi-fidelity designs with development. Migrating the team from Adobe XD to Figma allowed us to show MMO how to deisgn with consistency and efficiency.
Full Team Collaboration
We worked to build partnerships with Product and Development team members. Working within the team sprints, we collectively discovered and defined new feature requirements, and provided UX guidance as new features were being developed.
Member experience App
02/RESEARCH AND INSIGHTS
The team set out to answer big questions through a mixed-methods approach to research, and to establish a means to define a customer's journey throughout the entire process, not just focused on digital.
Customer Journey Management and Insights
The team created an initial customer journey that spanned multiple products and experiences. We identified key areas of opportunity, prioritized opportunities for improvement, and provided recommendations for journey management tools and processes for sustainable Journey Ops
Generative Research and Concepts
Once an opportunity was identified in the journey phase, our team would generate a key question to research. E.g. How can we make our claims process better for members? We'd conduct research, drive insights, and develop concepts to test with relevant members.
Evaluative Research and Resonance Testing
The team set the standard for evaluative testing on both the MED and MXA product teams, showing how to conduct testing within a sprint cycle to inform upcoming work. We also introduced MMO to Resonance Testing—a way to test a product's perceived value and connection with customers
member journey example
03/UX TEAM UPLIFT
The team hit the ground running, quickly learned the Medical Mutual’s business, and built a UX process that dovetailed into Product and Development workflows
Design System Creation
The team took three months to create an initial design system to be used with MXA and MED. The design system was developed to be developer-centric with relevant code snippets and contextual instructions for how and when to use components
UX Defined Roles and Responsibilities
We developed a bespoke set of key UX capabilities needed for MMO UX to be successful and assessed the entire MMO team, highlighting strengths and skills gaps. Ultimately, we gave full recommendations on how to build the UX team to be sustainable.
Customer-centric Process Map
A key artifact that the team developed early on was a universal process map. The map highlighted key areas within the customer journey all the way down to delivered features. Showing the thread of value all the way through the process. It was an effective way to align the organization to UX and Product processes.
DESIGN SYSTEM AND PROCESS MAP
The REsults
01
Delivered and continue to build great product designs for two flagship products–The Member Experience App and Group Admin Portal
02
Developed the Med Mutual playbook for research-to-action, by leading research efforts, documenting best practices, and socializing with teams
03
Created an overarching customer journey to demonstrate the value in a journey-led approach to find and act on CX opportunities
04