MyBupa: IA and Navigation Redesign Overview
MyBupa App
IA and Navigation redesign
Project overview
The goal of the project is to develop an intentional, scalable system to improve wayfinding across our core HI digital experiences for current and future propositions.
I had the privilege of collaborating with a Principal Researcher and a Content Designer to spearhead this transformative project.
Our initiative began with a comprehensive engagement strategy, where we proactively connected with key stakeholders to meticulously gather data on user behaviours, use cases, and navigation paths. This foundational research was pivotal in identifying critical customer tasks and scenarios, ensuring our solutions were deeply rooted in user needs and preferences.
Additionally, we strategically aligned our efforts with existing and upcoming programs of work and initiatives within the organisation. This alignment not only facilitated synergy across projects but also ensured that our solutions seamlessly integrated into broader organisational objectives, maximising impact and sustainability.
My role:
Throughout this collaborative effort, I played a key role in synthesising research findings, facilitating productive discussions, and translating insights into actionable strategies
Lastly, I translated the findings into meaningful and logical customer centric Information Architecture, a relationship map and a sitemap. I am currently in the process of creating wireframes and clickable prototypes to test with customers and stakeholders.
Program Focus
Develop an intentional, scalable system to improve wayfinding across core HI digital experiences for current and future propositions.
Problem space
Poor findability – Unclear structure and labelling have led to serious usability issues, including task failure and cognitive load. For example, 79% of participants in a recent study couldn’t find where to ‘get an estimate’ in the myBupa app.
Inconsistent experience – Our digital content ecosystem has grown without intervention from guiding principles and schemes, leading to inconsistent navigation and disconnected journeys across our channels.
Scalability challenges – Cluttered navigation menus have made it difficult to surface new propositions, like Connected Care and Life Rewards. And it’s only getting worse
Operational inefficiency – Without a defined process and engagement model, IA decision-making is slow and uncertain
Key milestones and activities
We followed a meticulous and customer centric approach to effectively tackle the challenges and constraints faced by this project
01 Alignment
Kick Off
“>Align on project goals, gather current and future user tasks for myBupa
02 Research
Baseline and analytics review
Understand key navigation pain points eg. 79% of participants in a recent study couldn’t find where to ‘get an estimate’ in the myBupa app.
03 Research
Preliminary modelling
Preliminary modelling to identify key objects, actions, and taxonomies.
04 Research
Card sort learnings
Explore how users categorise current and future myBupa functionality and mental models
05 Concepts
IA and Navigation concepts
“>Ideate on potential concepts
06 Concepts
Testing and Iterations
Test with users and stakeholders to ensure seamless findability and scalability
07 Execution
Governance model
Define operational model for IA best practices and change process and management
08 Next horizons
Repeatable process
Define a tested process that can be used for future IA and Nav projects
Kick-off
In this initial phase, we collaborated closely with stakeholders, including product managers, developers, and business analysts. Our focus was on understanding project goals, user needs, and business requirements. Key activities included:
- User Research: Conducted interviews and workshops to gather insights into current user behaviors and pain points.
- Task Analysis: Identified common tasks performed by myBupa users.
- Goal Alignment: Ensured everyone was on the same page regarding project objectives.
Additionally, we strategically aligned our efforts with existing and upcoming programs of work and initiatives within the organisation. This alignment not only facilitated synergy across projects but also ensured that our solutions seamlessly integrated into broader organisational objectives, maximising impact and sustainability.
My Role:
Throughout this collaborative effort, I played a key role in
- Mapping out all key stakeholders and initiating conversations,
- Synthesising research findings from various areas,
- Facilitating productive discussions,
- Translating insights into actionable strategies
- Defining achievable timelines
Baseline and analytics review
During this stage, we conducted comprehensive analyses to gain deep insights into current user behaviours, pain points, and navigation challenges within the existing app. This phase was instrumental in informing strategic decisions and laying the groundwork for an optimised user experience.
Key Activities:
Analytics Assessment:
- Data Collection: Gathered quantitative data from analytics platforms to understand user interactions, navigation paths, bounce rates, and other relevant metrics.
Qualitative Research:
- User Interviews: Conducted in-depth interviews with a representative sample of myBupa app users to gather qualitative insights into their experiences, pain points, and preferences.
- Usability Testing: Facilitated usability testing sessions to observe how users interacted with the current navigation structure and to identify usability issues.
Competitive Analysis:
- Benchmarking: Analysed competitors’ apps and industry best practices to benchmark myBupa’s navigation and information architecture against leading standards.
- Feature Comparison: Evaluated feature sets, navigation patterns, and design approaches to identify opportunities for differentiation and improvement.
Data Synthesis and Insights Generation:
- Insights Compilation: Synthesised findings from quantitative analytics, qualitative research, and competitive analysis into actionable insights and recommendations.
- Identified Pain Points: Documented specific pain points and usability issues identified by users, prioritising them based on severity and impact on user experience.
My Role:
My key role was to guide the research activities in this stage to enable the Principal researcher plan and implement their activities efficiently and gather usable insights from Customers, Business, Tech teams and market. I also enabled highlighting and refining the insights relevant to the IA and Navigation of myBupa app.
Use Cases
Analytics review
Preliminary modelling
This phase was crucial in organising information in a way that aligns with user mental models, facilitates intuitive navigation, and enhances overall usability within the myBupa app.
Key Activities:
Object Oriented UX Principles:
- Identifying Objects: Defined core objects within the myBupa app, such as user profiles, health records, insurance plans, and appointment scheduling.
- Understanding Relationships: Analysed relationships between objects to determine how they interact and support user tasks and workflows.
Content Audit and Inventory:
- Content Assessment: Conducted a thorough audit of existing content within the app, identifying redundancies, outdated information, and gaps.
- Content Inventory: Created a comprehensive inventory of all content elements, categorising them based on relevance, importance, and user priority.
Hierarchical Tree Structure Design:
- Information Hierarchy: Developed a hierarchical structure for organising content and features within the myBupa app, ensuring that key information is easily accessible and prioritised.
- Navigation Flow: Designed intuitive navigation flows that guide users logically through the app, supporting seamless transitions between related content areas..
My Role:
The Preliminary Modelling stage laid a solid foundation for the myBupa Information Architecture and Navigation Redesign project by:
- Clear Content Structure: Assisted in defining a clear and organised structure for app content based on Object Oriented UX principles, enhancing usability and user engagement.
- Improved Information Access: Established a logical information hierarchy and navigation flow, making it easier for users to find and interact with relevant information and features.
- Prototype Validation: Validated early design concepts through iterative prototyping and user testing, refining the IA design based on user feedback and usability insights.
By focusing on structured content modelling and user-centric design principles, this stage set the stage for developing a more intuitive and user-friendly information architecture within the myBupa app. It aimed to enhance overall user experience by optimising content organisation, navigation paths, and task completion efficiency.
Content modelling
Object and relationship mapping: OOUX
Card sort - uncovering user mental models for better Information Architecture
In a card sort study, participants place individually labeled cards into groups that make the most sense to them.
This informs ideas into how we might structure information in our digital experience to make it easy for others to find.
In our customer interviews we…
- Explored their experiences navigating the health system
- Their perception and use of PHI and digital experiences
- Conducted a card sort activity asking users to naturally group the tasks curated from stakeholders inputs.
Sample insights
Initial tree structures
Evaluating early concepts of different menu labels and categories for findability.
Tree testing allowed us to test our site structure, categorisation and labels before we designed a user interface. It evaluates a hierarchical category structure, or tree, by having users find the location/path in the tree where specific tasks can be completed.
For each task, we looked to understand:
Task success
Time taken
First click
Path taken
Sample insights
IA and Navigation Design
This phase was pivotal in transforming insights from research into actionable design solutions aimed at improving user experience and operational efficiency within the app. This stage focused on conceptualising and visualising new IA structures and navigation flows that address identified pain points and align with user needs and expectations.
Key Activities:
Conceptual IA Design:
- Synthesising Insights: Integrated findings from baseline reviews, analytics, and user research to inform the design of a new IA framework.
- Iterative Refinement: Developed multiple IA concepts and navigation models, refining them through collaborative workshops and stakeholder feedback sessions.
Navigation Structure Development:
- Information Architecture Mapping: Defined clear hierarchies and taxonomies for organising app content, ensuring logical groupings and easy navigation paths.
- Navigation Patterns: Established intuitive navigation patterns, such as breadcrumb trails, mega menus, or sidebar navigation, to facilitate seamless user interactions.
Wireframing and Prototyping:
- Visualising Concepts: Created detailed wireframes and interactive prototypes to visualise IA concepts and navigation flows.
- User Testing: Conducted usability testing sessions with representative users to gather feedback on navigation clarity, findability of content, and overall user satisfaction.
Accessibility and Scalability Considerations:
- Scalable Design: Designed IA structures that can accommodate future growth and new features, ensuring scalability and adaptability over time.
- Accessibility Compliance: Ensured that navigation designs meet accessibility standards, making the app usable for all users, including those with disabilities.
Stakeholder Alignment and Iterations:
- Collaborative Workshops: Engaged stakeholders, including UX/UI designers, product managers, and developers, in collaborative workshops to refine IA designs and ensure alignment with project goals.
- Iterative Refinement: Iteratively refined IA and navigation designs based on stakeholder feedback and usability testing insights, aiming for continuous improvement and optimisation.
My Role:
I contributed to the design phase of the project by producing several key outcomes:
- Information sitemap: I created a visual representation of the organisation of the App’s content. The aim is to understand high level grouping, structure and hierarchy of our digital experience
- Interaction map: To understand navigation and interaction paths customers may take within our digital experience.
- Navigation schemes: Including labels, patterns and page types. To enable consistency within our digital experience as we add new propositions. Also to improve velocity and reduce effort to create new experiences.
- Benefit model: To inform business case and impact measurement.
Key outcomes:
- Enhanced User Experience: Developed intuitive navigation structures that improve user journey efficiency and task completion rates.
- Improved Findability: Optimized IA design to make critical information and features more discoverable, reducing user frustration and enhancing satisfaction.
- Alignment with User Needs: Ensured that IA decisions were driven by user insights and aligned with user mental models and expectations.
- Future-Proof Design: Established a scalable IA framework capable of accommodating future app enhancements and updates, minimising disruption and maintaining consistency.
Sample artefacts
Interaction map
Low Fidelity wireframes and prototype
High fidelity prototype
Testing and iterations
To ensure the IA and navigation redesign was user-friendly and effective, we conducted multiple testing phases followed by iterative improvements.
1. Usability Testing
- Moderated & Unmoderated Testing: We ran both moderated and unmoderated tests with diverse user groups. These sessions provided key insights into user behaviour, helping us identify pain points and improve navigation flow.
2. Key Metrics
- Task Success & Time on Task: We tracked how easily users could complete tasks and how long it took, aiming to streamline navigation and improve efficiency.
- Click Path Analysis: This helped us optimise user journeys by removing unnecessary steps.
3. A/B Testing
A/B tests compared different versions of the navigation structure, ensuring the most effective design was selected.
4. Accessibility Testing
The redesign was thoroughly tested for accessibility, meeting WCAG 2.1 AA standards, with screen reader and keyboard navigation assessments.
5. Iterative Design
Based on test results, we refined labels, hierarchy, and flow in several rounds of design iterations, ensuring continuous improvement.
Future Governance Model: Sustaining Excellence in IA Practices
In future endeavors, establishing a robust Governance Model for Information Architecture (IA) will be paramount to maintaining consistency, quality, and effectiveness across digital platforms. This model will focus on defining clear roles and responsibilities, ensuring that teams are equipped to manage, update, and scale IA solutions effectively. Emphasis will be placed on developing comprehensive documentation outlining IA principles, guidelines, and best practices. Regular audits and reviews will be conducted to assess performance and alignment with evolving user needs and industry standards. Training programs and knowledge-sharing initiatives will foster a culture of continuous learning and expertise development, ensuring that IA excellence remains a cornerstone of our digital strategy.
IA and Navigation principles
Foundational insights for future IA projects
Repeatable Process for IA Projects
Understand current state and systems
Baseline and understand current reality, capability and dependencies.
- Kick off and alignment
- Stakeholder map
- Content audit
- Navigation baseline (findability)
- Analytics review
- Current state IA map
Explore customer mental models
Understand how customers intuitively think, group and find different content
- Card sort
- Customer interviews
- IA concept schemes
IA concepts and navigation patterns
Develop IA concepts and navigation patterns through iterative evidence-based learnings
- IA concepts and schemes
- Customer Treejack testing
- IA structure (tree, sitemap)
- Navigation patterns & page types
- Prototypes
- Customer testing
Recommendation and governance
Documentation, artefacts, benefit modelling and process to manage immediate & future change
- IA artefacts (Sitemap, navigation patterns)
- Benefit modelling
- Roadmap and implementation planning
- Change management
- Governance process, roles and responsibilities
Achievements and impacts
Success Metrics:
My 3 years at Optus
Optus
Singtel Optus Pty Limited is an Australian telecommunications company headquartered in Macquarie Park, New South Wales, Australia. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Singtel. Optus is the second-largest wireless carrier in Australia, with 10.5 million subscribers as of 2019. The product offerings of Optus range from Mobile Phones, 4G, 5G and prepaid mobile plans, and home internet.
My role and contributions
I was hired by Optus in July 2019 to work as part of the experience design chapter that was spread across the digital sales tribe.
During my 2.8 years tenure at Optus, I got an opportunity to lead experience design including UX and UI of some high net worth projects, impacting millions of customers across Australia
As the Lead Experience Designer,
My responsibilities included:
- Collaborating with Product Owner and respective business partners to define product backlog
- Lead UX experimentation across sales squads, guiding the team on well- defined hypothesis, prioritisation framework, and solutions to be tested.
- Leading end-to-end UX research including testing plans, participant recruitment, facilitation, synthesise and presenting findings/insight
- Designing new customer journeys and interfaces, from low-fidelity to high- fidelity artefacts including sketching, wireframing, interactive prototyping, and visual design
- Auditing and optimising web interfaces to ensure the highest possible standard of experience design across optus.com.au
Some Major Projects I worked on:
Optus Choice plans
Optus mobile plans went through a major revamp in 2019 in the form of Optus Choice Plan. A new model of giving customer a flexibility of building their own plan was also introduced.
My Role:
Senior Experience designer
Opportunities and challenges
- Opportunity to redefine online shopping experience
- First in Australia Build-your-own plan launch
Process
- Stakeholder interviews and workshops
- Journey mapping
- Information architecture
- Wireframes
- Prototypes
- Usability testing
- Multiple Showcases
Business Impact
12% increase in online sales for new customers
Optus Family Plan
Optus introduced a new bundles plan for families in 2020. The plan included 4 SIM plans clubbed together for $149 with an ability to add more child plans to it for $29 each.
My Role:
Lead Experience designer
Opportunities and challenges
- Multiple complex scenarios
- Extremely lengthy process
- First of its kind online shop journey in Australian market
Process
- Stakeholder interviews and workshops
- Journey mapping
- Information architecture
- Wireframes
- Prototypes
- Usability testing
- Multiple Showcases
Business Impact
New product launch for 15% of total customer households.
Seemless transition to new family plan by 5.6% families across Australia
Subscription Plans
Optus transformed all its mobile plans to a post paid subscription model in 2021. The project came with its own complexity in migrating new and existing customers to the new payment model.
My Role:
Lead Experience designer
Opportunities and challenges
- Shift in mental model of customers to adapt subscription model for mobile plans
- Multiple complex scenarios with multiple payment terms for various Optus and third party add-ons
Process
- Stakeholder interviews and workshops
- Journey mapping
- Information architecture
- Wireframes
- Prototypes
- Usability testing
- Multiple Showcases
Business Impact
Generated $5m uplift in revenue by targeting 1.5% of new customers
Optus Digital Core2.0
Core 2.0 started as a digital transformation project in Aug 2019 with a vision to transition from a legacy platform to Salesforce commerce cloud called SFCC. The flexibility of the platform presented me with an opportunity to refine and improve overall online purchase experience for Optus NBN customers.
My Role:
Lead Experience designer
Opportunities and challenges
For new customers:
- NBN new plan purchase journey
- 4G new plan purchase journey
- 5G new plan purchase journey
Existing Customer
- NBN new plan purchase journey
- Re-contract or Rate plan change journeys
- Home relocation journeys
- Complex relocation journeys
Process
- Stakeholder interviews and workshops
- Journey mapping
- Information architecture
- Wireframes
- Prototypes
- Usability testing
- Multiple Showcases
Business Impact
40% reduction in cart abandonment
Digital Design System
While working on the Optus Digital core, a need of proper design system was identified.With assistance of the Fjord design team, I worked on establishing the new design system following the Atomic design methodology
My Role:
Lead Experience designer from Optus.
Opportunities and challenges
Lack of design system was leading to:
- Discrepancies between design mockups and implementations
- Inconsistent designs across various projects and sections of the website.
- Increased design effort due to revisiting the design language with every project
- Increased development time due to confusing design patters and rebuild efforts.
Business Impact
For designers:
- Focus on concept design and journeys without worrying about component designs
- Create building blocks and design like lego
- Less documentation is needed for handover to developers.
For stakeholders:
- Easier to align with marketing and brand language
- Better time to market
- Reduced cost of maintenance
- Consistent customer experience
Behavioural Economics Academy
In collaboration with Fjord design team, I initiated a new project at Optus called Behavioural Economics Academy. The purpose of this academy was to educate the designa nd delivery teams to effectively use BE principles while designing new online shop journeys and running smaller experiments using Optimisely.
My Role:
One of the founding members of the Academy.
Established engagement system within Optus digital sales tribe.
Opportunities and challenges
- Being a massive organisation, there are multiple initiatives being undertaken in parallel. Every team works with their own methodologies while refining designs and conducting experimentation.
- There was a need to bring all the teams to one platform and define a consistent and effective way of design refinements using BE principles.
- The project came with its own challenge of first educating the teams on various BE principles and Biases
Business Impact
- Immediately after establishing the governance system, we started seeing people conducting various controlled experimentation with a defined rule set to measure the success based on BE principles.
Disclaimer: Due to the confidential nature of these projects, I can run through the details in person, However, I am unable to put up design artefacts online for reference.