Improving the Digital Experience for Complex Medicaid Populations
Translating contractual commitments into a cohesive, user-centered digital product
Area
Medicaid Managed Care
Scope
Care Coordination, Multi-Stakeholder Digital Experience
Duration
Multi-month engagement
Role
Service & Experience Designer
Collaboration
Business, Product, and Technology Partners
Details have been generalized to protect confidential information.
Problem
A new Medicaid program required translating contractual commitments into a cohesive digital experience for guardians of children with high behavioral health needs and their care teams. The intended end-to-end user experience was not clearly articulated, creating a risk of misalignment between contractual obligations, delivery decisions, and user needs.
Contribution
Translated contractual commitments into a user journey, led an alignment workshop on MVP scope, and designed the wireframes and key screens that guided engineering.
Impact
Went from ambiguous contractual commitments to an actionable, prioritized design plan in 8 weeks and supported the release of a digital platform serving children and families with complex care needs.
Business Context
A state Medicaid initiative required the rapid establishment of a managed care program serving children with complex behavioral health and multi-system needs.
The organization committed to delivering a digital platform to support care coordination, communication, and visibility across multiple stakeholders, including care coordinators, guardians, state workers, and multidisciplinary care teams.
The challenge was not simply building a product. It was ensuring contractual commitments were translated into a coherent, user-centered experience aligned with operational realities.
System Complexity
The experience involved:
Contractual requirements with defined service commitments
Multiple stakeholder roles with distinct responsibilities
Interdependent business and technology workstreams
Tight timelines tied to state program launch
Ambiguity between contractual language and operational execution created the risk of fragmented product delivery and misaligned expectations.
Approach
The contract specified what the platform had to provide, but not the experience around it, so I started by defining the intended end-to-end experience.
Scope alignment: I translated the contract’s commitments into a user journey for one of its scenarios and mapped the committed functionality across it.
Alignment workshop: I led a two-day remote workshop with business and technology partners to validate the commitments and narrow the MVP. We reviewed the stakeholder map, personas, and future-state journey, surfaced gaps between existing and needed capabilities, aligned on the end-to-end flow, and prioritized features.
User flows and key screens: I designed user flows and high-level wireframes covering key flows and screens, including mobile, that set the visual style for the full product. The goal was a clear guide for engineers to build and expand from.
Delivery support: I stayed engaged through release, reviewing pages for consistency, joining monthly demos, and providing new screen guidelines as needed.
This reframed the initiative from feature implementation to experience-driven delivery planning.
My Role
I partnered with business and technology stakeholders to:
Turn contractual commitments into a user journey and scenarios
Lead an alignment workshop to validate commitments, surface gaps, and narrow MVP scope
Design user flows, wireframes, and key screens as a guide for engineers
Support the team through release with design reviews and monthly demos
Outcomes
The initiative resulted in:
An actionable, prioritized design plan, delivered 8 weeks after starting from ambiguous commitments
Alignment across business and technology on scope and MVP priorities
Wireframes and key screens that gave the delivery team a clear guide to build from
Release of a digital platform supporting complex care coordination
Long-Term Enablement
Beyond product launch, this work:
Built a collaborative working relationship between design and technology teams
Kept user needs, contractual obligations, and delivery decisions aligned through release
The platform continues to serve children and families with complex needs and provides value beyond initial release.
Additional details can be discussed in conversation using anonymized examples.