Reimagining the customer experience for long-term Care insurance customers
John Hancock faces a gap in how it engages with pre-claim long-term care insurance customers, leaving a critical opportunity untapped. The rising cost of long-term care places increasing financial pressure on both customers and insurers. To address these challenges, myself and the HCD team facilitated a series of workshops aimed at designing new features and experiences to help customers stay healthier for longer, ultimately reducing the length and delaying the onset of claims.
Through a three-workshop series, we collaborated with cross-functional teams, subject matter experts, and real customer insights to rethink how John Hancock supports its pre-claim population. The workshops explored proactive health management strategies, wellness engagement opportunities, and improved resource access. The outcome was a set of strategic concepts and digital solutions designed to empower customers in their care journey and help shape the future roadmap of the LTC feature development.
My contributions:
UX Design lead
Timeline:
May 2024 – October 2024
Understanding the LTC journey through personas
To design a meaningful long-term care experience, we centered our research and designs around two key personas:
Alex, a 60-year-old policyholder, is beginning to think about his future care needs but isn’t sure what resources are available to help him stay healthy and independent for as long as possible. He wants to make the most of his long-term care insurance but isn’t actively engaged with his policy beyond paying premiums.
Elena, Alex’s 35-year-old daughter, is preparing to take on a larger role in his care as he ages. She wants a clear, simplified way to manage his policy, understand his benefits, and ensure he’s taking proactive steps to stay healthy
Workshop series
To reimagine the pre-claim experience, we structured a three-workshop series, each focused on a key phase of the long-term care journey. Before the workshops, we developed high-level journey overviews to map out the challenges and opportunities at each step, ensuring a clear framework for discussion.
Each workshop was designed to be highly interactive, bringing together cross-functional teams, subject matter experts, and stakeholders to generate and refine ideas. Through a mix of brainstorming sessions, collaborative exercises, and structured ideation, participants explored potential features and solutions tailored to the specific needs of policyholders like Alex and caregivers like Elena.
By the end of the series, we had a collection of innovative concepts aimed at proactively engaging pre-claim customers, promoting better health outcomes, and simplifying policy management for caregivers.
Visualizing the future experience
At the culmination of the workshop series, I analyzed all the materials, insights, and ideas generated throughout the sessions. With a focus on the key stages of the long-term care journey, I set out to capture as many opportunities as possible in a set of five visual experiences illustrating how Alex and Elena might interact with new features and solutions.
It was interesting to see how ideas from multiple workshops sessions morphed into holistic solutions that benefited the customer across all stages of the long-term care journey. It was critical to keep the full set of experiences in mind when designing interactions across each prototype. Carrying different elements throughout each of the stages helped build consistency between the different types of interactions.
Highlights from each of the stages
The series of prototype experiences takes Alex and Elena through years of potential long-term care interactions. They start with Alex logging in to his LTC account and going through an account set up guide with “Cari” there to assist him or give additional context when necessary
Once he has his account set up, he is given some next step recommendations. He downloads the longevity health engagement app to help track and motivate him in completing any longevity health activities to keep him healthy.
Some years pass and now Alex is beginning to wonder if it is time for him to start thinking about his long-term care needs. He signs into his LTC account and uses the health assessment tool to see what it recommends based on where he is on his health journey.
As Alex approaches a critical moment in long-term care journey, Elena uses the provider search and cost tools to start planning for future care. Finding the right provider is an important step and can be based on a number of criteria.
As more years pass, Alex is now at a crucial moment of his long-term care journey where he has begun to receive care from a provider and needs to start his LTC claim. Using the guided initiation tool, Elena is able to upload all of her father’s information and schedule the virtual assessment in order to become benefit eligible.
Behind the scenes
Sometimes looking behind the curtain and seeing how the sausage gets made is fun (and a bit messy at times). Here is a snippet of me working out the AI assistant chat interaction that allows Alex and Elena to ask questions during their guided setup.
Bringing it all together
After multiple rounds of reviews, presentations, and refinements with stakeholders, I finalized the prototype experiences for the final readout with the entire John Hancock LTC organization. To bring the vision to life, I created five narrated video demos, each detailing key interactions within the experience. These videos guided viewers through Alex and Elena’s journey, illustrating how the proposed solutions would support them at every step.
The final LTC Vision demos
Take a look at some of the final demo videos showcasing Alex and Elena in their At-Risk and On Claim journey stages.
Next steps: user testing, prioritization, and development
The workshop series and final demo videos were crucial in defining the next steps of the LTC product roadmap. The workshops helped us identify key areas of impact and generate ideas, while the demo videos brought those ideas to life, providing a clear vision for the team. These demos became key tools during user testing, enabling us to gather valuable feedback and ensure the features met customer needs. By aligning stakeholders and refining the direction, the workshops and videos set us up for success in user testing, prioritization, and collaboration with development.