Ambiguity is Our Best Friend

The A Team Post Spring Presentation ❤️

Back at it again

The last time you heard from us, we were getting ready to wrap up the first half of this 8-month long project with a presentation, report, and a website (which all went swell 💫). We then took a week-long break to rest up and get ready for the second half of the project.

To remind you, we came out of the first half of the project finishing the “Doing the right thing” phase and starting “Doing things right” phase, as the last storyboard speed dating session Griffin mentioned in our last post seeped into it. Therefore, we started this second half already having diverged to four potential solutions to our question, “How might we give insurees control to manage cost when they need it?” so that they can make informed coverage and care decisions based on their situation.

Original three solution ideas

Little did we know at the time, but our discussion with the client regarding the three ideas would lead us down a whole new path. Both CostScale and AskMarc were relatively straightforward in what needs they were addressing and how they were doing so. DoMyStuff, on the other hand, opened up a whole new opportunity that got our clients excited. The original intent of DoMyStuff sparked an avenue to a problem Highmark had yet to solve: meeting the insurees where they’re at when they’re not in trouble. As this fruitful conversation generated new forms DoMyStuff could take, it transformed into a Financial Health Planner that would provide the insurees with medical tests they should get throughout their life along with the associated costs based on the individual’s insurance — a service that adapts and grows with their personal health.

The transformation of DoMyStuff → Financial Health Planner

Out of the three, we decided to quickly move forward with the Financial Health Planner idea (and put a hold on CostScale and AskMarc) for two reasons. One, the strong reactions we got from both our clients and faculty advisors showed us that this idea was novel and had a lot of potential. Another reason was because we divided the FHP idea into three use cases — one for people with a short term condition (e.g. pregnancy), one for people with a long term condition (e.g. diabetes), and another for people who don’t have any conditions. We divided it into the three categories because people’s perspectives towards their health and their motivation to do something about it will be heavily influenced by their current condition. Moreover, people with either a short term or long term condition have a clearer and more established path (e.g. types of checkups and the frequency of those checkups) compared to that of a healthy person who doesn’t have to visit the doctor as frequently. Therefore, because our uses cases involved a specific target audience we didn’t know much about — how they were currently navigating around their health, if they utilized any platforms to help them manage their health conditions, or if they even had any issues with their current process — we needed to see if this solution served any value by validating the “need” this solution was addressing. We had a lot of questions that needed to be answered; and we needed them asap.

In order to answer those questions, we set up interviews with people who either gave birth recently or were currently pregnant and people with chronic conditions such as diabetes, celiac, and sleep apnea. Over Zoom, we conducted directed storytelling to fully understand their current processes, presented our solution idea to hear their thoughts, and co-created what their ideal outcomes would be.

Wireframes shown to interviewees

We started off the directed storytelling portion with a simple question, “Tell me about the last time you visited the doctor for [insert condition].” With this starting point, we let them lead the conversation, only asking questions as guard rails to keep them on track. We decided to start off the interview with this method because we wanted to extract organic, unbiased answers from the interviewees and get them in the mindset of taking care of their condition. This was a great segway into the next portion of walking through the demo with them. Because we were interested in the value and not the usability of the platform, we clicked through a couple of screens just enough to convey the idea of the solution. We then asked if this platform would assist or ameliorate their current process of managing their condition. Lastly, as a co-design/co-creation process, we ideated together on how this platform could be further improved to better meet their needs.

Twists and Turns

This round of interviews invalidated the Financial Health Planner idea ( for the first two use cases — we’re still in the process of testing it with those who don’t have any special conditions). Because people have been dealing with their conditions for so long, they knew what to expect and were already getting sufficient help from a variety of resources that were available to them. Essentially, although it would’ve been helpful in the first few months of their diagnosis, our solution would’ve ended up being just another platform they had to keep track of.

Although it wasn’t the feedback we had hoped for, we found what we had to find and had no time to fret over it. We immediately put the other two ideas (CostScale and AskMarc) back on the table to test along with the FHP for those with no health conditions. Although we knew that these two ideas addressed a real need, we wanted to test if the form in which these solutions took properly addressed those needs. Because everyone (with insurance) was our user, we interviewed a diverse range of people in terms of age and economic status. Again, these interviews were conducted over Zoom in a format of directed storytelling and a demo of our three ideas.

One of our interviewees interacting with our chatbot AskMarc

Similar to the previous round of interviews, we started the directed storytelling portion with a simple question, “Tell me about the last time you visited the doctor” and took off from there. This round, however, we demoed not just one, but all three ideas (again, just enough to get the idea across). Both the CostScale and FHP ideas were conveyed via screen wireframes. AskMarc required a little more effort as we were trying to mimic a chatbot. We gave them a scenario where they got hurt in a skiing accident, sent them a bill (that we curated) regarding the care they received for that incident, and utilized the Zoom chat function as if it was the chatbot. Once we ran through all three ideas, we ended the session by having them rank the three ideas from least to most useful. This round of interviews is still ongoing and the results will be included in our next post 🙃.

With the goal to land on one solution idea by June 12th, the past two weeks have been one hell of a ride (and is scheduled to continue for the next 3 days) — picking up and dropping ideas left and right. As confusing as this process has been, we know it’ll all be worth it when we feel confident with the solution we have chosen to work on for the next two months.

Stay tuned for the big reveal!

- The A Team