A lightweight messaging tool for enterprise internal communication

BlueCard Chat

SUMMARY
This was the first launch of a new messaging feature for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association(BCBSA). For decades, the giant association has completed millions of inter-company claims processing through an outdated email-like communication system. Now, we were tasked to build the first live chat tool embedded in its internal enterprise portal, BlueCard, to displace the old experience, which will empower 34 BCBS subsidiaries on their core business of claim processing.

As our team were parallel working on the user experience and UI paradigms for the internal enterprise portal BlueCard. Our high-level goals were as following:

  1. Build first Real-Time Chat MVP to reduce coordination efforts on claim processing
  2. Make it as intuitive and easy to learn and use as possible for everyone
  3. Build the components library for Chat UI cautiously based off our design system

As the first designer of the BCBSA project, I was working with my design lead and we were assigned to collaborate with Product owners, product managers, and developer teams from BCBSA.

Old BCBSA communication tool: Not scary...But outdated and hard to digest
BlueCard Chat V1 is planned to be launched within 5 pilot subsidiaries by the end of 2022, helping over 150+ end users to boost their operational efficiency.
New BlueCard Chat integrated to the portal
Loading Chat
Chat Drawer: Landing Page & Inside Conversation
Different States of Message Card
KICKOFF

Rafting through our own path

An interesting conversation that happened between BCBSA and us at an early stage of the project reflects the challenge we are facing:

"We want to build a real-time chat tool to help our companies communicate on claim!"
"Can you help me to elaborate on what chat functions you are imagining right now?"
"A REAL-TIME CHAT tool! Did you get it?"

Since BCBSA product team still remained ambiguous upon the scope of chat tool, we had to lead ourselves and our product team to picture out an actionable MVP in 5 months(from research start to dev start).

PROCESS

Understanding chat holistically

Since there’s a huge leap between existing email communication and envisioned chat tools, we asked ourselves a question before diving into the research:

"What role that our chat is going to play during user’s workflow?"

With this learning goal, we stepped back to understand users workflow by user interviews and Jobs-to-be-done(JTBD) framework. It kept our eyes on most critical needs aligned to their high-level work mission instead of getting too lost on user experience details.

Understand user jobs from high level & breakdown level

Identifying scope with team

The culmination of understanding phase marked by our workshop with BCBSA business and developer teams. Since our engineers and product manager came with deep knowledge about the legacy and history of BCBSA’ workflow, we gained comprehensive perspectives of MVP scope based on their opinion of ‘what should be enhanced/kept/removed’.

PROBLEM REVEALING

Ad hoc conversation in the workflow

Our JTBD exercise and user journey revealed our users work pattern: To check for the key data during claim review, ad hoc conversations can happen at any time between claim processors to ensure a sensible adjudication based on full picture of claim.

...vs. complicated messaging tool

However, existing communication experience requested massive manual work and data coordination effort, which deviated the initial intention of the tool. It perfectly guides the direction we should head - building a lightweight chat tool to simplify and speed up the claim processing.

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1. Multitasking between pages and tabs

Users need to switch tabs frequently to complete every chat/claim processing.

2. Seeking Context for Conversation

Users spends extensive time on question shooting to understand the current claim context.

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3. Massive Manual Work

The workflow involves extra data transcribing work as they are tasking between tabs.

NORTHSTAR
The current communication experience demands huge data coordination efforts, which deviates into the BCBSA employees' mission, "handle the claim/messaging responsively and concisely".

How might we revert the experience and help claim processors to jump into the conversation at any place, at any time to speed up their workflow?
SOLUTION

Introducing BlueCard Chat

After numerous sketches, reviews, iterations and tests, we became confident to introduce BlueCard Chat to our users.

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New BlueCard Chat
Multitasking between pages and tabs

Integrate chat into the workflow

USER SCENARIO

Claim processors had to open multiple windows/tabs for data transcribing or spelling check between the claim record and message.

SOLUTION

We constructed new IA and broke down the page based on their usage(claim review vs. message). Users can quickly examine data and update claim record by horizontal browsing.

Multitasking between pages and tabs

One chat at a time

USER SCENARIO

Claim processors could easily fall into multitasking within multiple messages/claims via traditional chat UI, resulting in a longer response time and slower claim processing rate.

SOLUTION

By displaying chats in card style and allowing users to continue one conversation at one time, we kept users' attention to every update of the current task. At the same time, we limited users infinite scrolling to prevent unnecessary distractions caused by other information.

Seeking Context for Conversation

Navigate users to ask right questions

USER SCENARIO

Claim issues can be different one and another. Currently, claim processor spent a great amount of time on communicating questions they are facing.

SOLUTION

We introduced automation and categorize chats by users' questions before connecting to real expert. To help users further identify their questions, we provided the tooltip displaying the common questions under each category to choose the correct question area for users' reference.‍

Massive Manual Work

Copy data in one click

USER SCENARIO

Claim processors used to use multiple clicks and countless Ctrl + C/Ctrl + V to transcribe key data value between chat and claim data.

SOLUTION

By providing duplicate button for key data in message drawer, we simplified the copy/paste by one click for user transcribing date flexibly.

Seeking Context & Novice Experience

Helping users easily grasp Chat

Since it would be the first time we introduce a new chat functionality to users, we had to provide a soft start on user onboarding. Thus, we polished UX copy for all the empty states and loading animation. With clear direction on how users can use chat and what they can achieve via the tool, users can have overarching understanding on the usage and what they can expect in each step of chat.

NEXT STEP

A designer's job never ends

Before launching the chat tool to broad user groups and pilot plans, we had several product trials with claim processors and managers to test if our design met their working mission, "handling the claim/messaging responsively and concisely." We focused on Average Chat Handle Time as one of our key metrics and documented time delays caused by UI misunderstandings or interaction errors. We are proud of the trial receiving extremely positive feedback:

The average chat handle time is 20% shorter than the time range BCBSA expected
The average claim researching time decreased by 15%
LEARNINGS
  1. Unpack the challenge from product thinking instead of user-centered thinking
    During the project, I was constantly practicing 'Jobs-to-be-done' and unpacked what the user wants to achieve during their work and how our product help users reach there. We previously over-focused on user experience and pain points, leading us to spend too much time jumping into various dazzling innovations which deviate from the core value of chat or inventing UI patterns that didn't fit into users' workflow.‍
  2. Best UX ≠ Happiest Path.
    When I started to work on an actual project, I realized I must take care of all the edge cases and every aspect of user experience, and I had to get rid of 'only thinking of the happy path.' A smooth, happy path is only the part of UX.
    Every time I finish the low fidelity user flows, I will go by each user actions/system response to see what extreme scenarios(i.e., too long user inputs)/errors(i.e.no relevant search results) could happen. Based on edge cases I found, I can reframe my flow to navigate users back to the right track.
Date
Position
Responsibilities
More

May 2022 - Aug 2021

Product Designer

User Research

User Flows

Wireframing

UX Writing

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