The Health Care Calculator
A look at my UX process from start to finish as I demystify health care costs in retirement.
So here’s the problem. Health care is one of the largest expenses in retirement and one of the top financial worries for pre-retirees. Yet the majority of people either underestimate or don't account for these costs when planning for retirement. My small agile team was tasked with demystifying health care costs in retirement and helping folks better prepare for them.
Project kickoff
To start this project off on the right foot, I brought the team together to agree on a long-term goal, success metrics, and guiding principles. We then identified the key questions we would need to answer to achieve our goal, and brainstormed a learning agenda that would uncover those answers.
Discovery phase
The discovery phase was dedicated to uncovering the root causes of our problem. Here’s what I did during this phase:
Reviewed existing research, from internal and external sources
Conducted expert interviews with financial and health care consultants
Ran a quantitative survey of over 200 pre- and post-retirees, in collaboration with the UX research team
Ran an unmoderated user test of an existing digital health care cost estimator, using UserTesting.com
Extracting insights
The root causes I identified
Health care costs in retirement are abstract and overwhelming
Even if you do know the costs, it's unclear what you can do about them
Health care considerations are not a significant part of retirement planning
And my hypotheses on how to address them
A personalized estimate on a relatable scale
Tailored next steps with benefits clearly outlined
Seamless integration with retirement planning
Prototype, test, repeat
I always push for user testing as early and often as possible. We went through several iterations during this project, and with each one we both refined the experience and added additional complexity.
One of the ways we rapidly developed and tested ideas was through a Google Design Sprint. Developed by the UX specialists at Google Ventures, the design sprint is a highly structured five-day process for quickly building and testing a prototype. I planned and led the sprint, updating certain aspects to better fit our team.
Moving to development
After several rounds of user testing we felt confident that the experience was both useful and usable. I worked closely with developers to ensure we could quickly and seamlessly launch MVP. Here’s a look at what we produced.
A fully responsive experience:
An input flow with easily digestible questions. For Fidelity customers, information is pre-filled where possible:
A results page that leads with a personalized view of health care costs over time. Because our testing revealed that pre-retirees differ greatly in both their knowledge of health care and their desire for details, the graph is designed with progressive disclosure in mind. At the topmost level, users get an overview with key milestones highlighted. They then have the option to view progressively specific information:
Retirement age has a huge impact on health care costs. While users have the option to adjust their retirement plans and see the impact on their overall timeline, our testing found that this can be overwhelming for some. To reduce this mental load, I designed a simple widget that highlights exactly how much money each year of delayed retirement can save. The widget’s location alongside the user’s total health care cost estimate provides an additional benefit of making that number less daunting:
Our testing also revealed that, with all these big numbers flying around, users want to be reassured about what determines their costs. A carousel below the overall cost estimate provides key takeaways, with the option to dive deeper into the full methodology. Finally, users are prompted to take action by either creating or updating their retirement plan with Fidelity: