HealthCare.gov…A Designer’s Perspective
FastCoDesign had three designers weigh in on HealthCare.gov’s new user experience. HealthCare.gov was launched in 2014, and it wasn’t just a poorly built backend that made the website awful. The design of HealthCare.gov was also subpar. However, with the New Year comes new changes. The HealthCare.gov website has made some significant improvements, which include:
• Responsive design – the responsive design now makes for a better mobile experience
• Transparency – on the old HealthCare.gov, after submitting a form, you might have to start over because the site was expecting the data in a certain format, but wouldn’t say what that format was. Now there are visual cues on the website stating that information has been entered correctly.
• Efficient Navigation
• Informative Signposts
Although HealthCare.gov has made changes, there are still some areas in which the website is lagging, such as:
• Still overwhelming
• Filtering is not well organized and intuitive
• It’s still impersonal – someone filling out a form on the website may be applying for themselves, but further on in the process it still asks questions about dependents.
• The paradox of choice – after completing the application, the website can suggest 40 or more different plans to choose from, which could lead to poor decision-making. Less is more.
• Excessive lingo – HealthCare.gov is assuming that everyone speaks the site’s language. Not everyone knows the terms such as deductible or coinsurance. The website should provide a clear understanding so all applicants know what they are getting.
Although the design of the HealthCare.gov website is not top-notch, the more improvements that are made will only increase the website’s efficiency; making the process easier for those looking to enroll.
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