A lightweight messaging tool for enterprise internal communication

BlueCard Chat

SUMMARY
This was a huge leap for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association(BCBSA). For decades, the giant association has run their core business through an outdated email-like communication system. Now, they decided to enter into a new era, a live chat experience embedded in its internal portal.
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This decision will improve operational efficiency for the BCBSA and its 34 subsidiaries while enhancing healthcare services for millions of Americans.

As framing a brand new experience, we were facing key challenges as following:

  1. Picture a new communication style or workflow no one has imagined, or experienced(So how?)
  2. Scope down the new experience into minimum viable product(MVP), and build it brick-by-brick

As the sole designer on this project, I need to both find effective solutions and clearly communicate every steps in my process to my team. (This is the key ingredient of 'trust' soup!)

Old BCBSA communication tool: Not scary...But outdated and hard to digest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 me at an early stage of the project reflects the challenge we are facing:

"We want to build a live 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 LIVE CHAT tool! Did you get it?"

With the chat tool's scope still unclear, I took the initiative to guide our product team in defining an achievable MVP that could go from research to development within 5 months.

PROCESS

Understanding chat holistically

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

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

I want to take a step back to understand how the product will support users' workflows. This helps me focus on the key product offerings rather than getting lost in minor UX details.

Understand user jobs from high level & breakdown level

Identifying scope with team

After conducting 12 user interviews and analyzing insights, I organized a workshop with the product team and tech leads to define the MVP scope. This workshop provides the space to sharing research process and findings, also opens for collaborative discussion. Together, we evaluated features to enhance, keep, or remove.

PROBLEM REVEALING

Ad hoc conversation in the workflow

Our JTBD exercise and user journey revealed our users work pattern: The need for conversations can pop up at any time during a day, and ad hoc attention and responses are needed.

...vs. complicated messaging tool

However, the current communication system cannot effectively handle spontaneous conversations or manage users' varying attention needs. The pain points visualized below highlight key opportunities for improving our new chat experience.

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 patterns can't respond to the need of BCBSA employees' daily operation, which is, "handle chats responsively and concisely".

How might we help BCBSA employees 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

Users had to open multiple windows/tabs for data transcribing or spelling check between the internal claim data and message.

SOLUTION

We broke down the page content into columns based on their usage. Users can easily multitask while chatting.

Multitasking between pages and tabs

One chat at a time

USER SCENARIO

Users could easily overwhelmed by multiple messages, resulting in a slower response.

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

Chats can be different one and another. Currently, users spent a great amount of time on communicating context instead of solving issues.

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

Users used to use multiple clicks and countless Ctrl + C/Ctrl + V to transcribe key data value between chat and other data fields.

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 task completion 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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