Date: 2020
Role: Senior product designer
Background: Discrepancies, or data differences, often arise between systems as a result of member changes such as moving or termination or life changes, or even system issues. It’s important for those issues to be resolved timely and accurately so that members do not experience a lapse in or loss of coverage.
Problem: When discrepancies in data between systems were flagged, Noyo support and benefits-administration (ben-admin) companies had to do a lot of back-and-forth emailing (and calling) to resolve the issue. People had to copy and paste information about the discrepancy into the email, and it was a slow and very manual process.
Goal: We wanted to make an in-app tool that would display the discrepancies and contextual information about the discrepancies, in a way that was easily and quickly resolved.
Process: I joined the company after this project had already been started, so what I did was test out the existing in-progress UIs with our customers and internal users. I conducted usability sessions and from those sessions uncovered the ways we could improve on the tool. I created prototypes, then conducted usability sessions on those, and repeated this iteration/testing process until we were satisfied that the tool met the goals we had set out for it.
Result: Our users were very pleased to have this tool, and found it very easy to use. They really liked seeing the context of each discrepancy and were able to complete the task at hand very quickly. We found out later, after the tool had been released for a while, that we needed to refine the types of discrepancies that were surfaced to the users in order to have the tool be the most useful it could be. But, the UI has consistently tested well and has consistently received positive feedback from our users.
Unfortunately, I was not able to find images of the in-progress iterations of the tool, but below are screenshots of what was released at launch.
This is the list of all the reconciliation issues (aka discrepancies) in the external dashboard. It was important to highlight what each discrepancy was, and which group and person it affected. We also added statuses to each one, to help everyone keep track of where it is in it’s resolution life-cycle. Then, users could filter by items in any particular status. This was not able to be done with email or phone call as easily, so this was already a value-add.
Below is the detail for a discrepancy - it is what the user would see on clicking on one that needs review.
This discrepancy detail contains context about the discrepancy, such as which system has what information, who it affects, and what the issue is. The user is prompted to select one of four available options, each of which is a resolution to the discrepancy.
When the user selects a resolution, they get another message on the resolution box of what action will be taking place as a result of selecting that option. They also are prompted to provide a note to go to Noyo’s support staff, and to confirm if they will be taking an action themselves. This keeps everyone on the same page about what will occur to resolve this discrepancy.
Once the user has submitted their desired resolution, and the Noyo support team has reviewed it and confirmed that it is resolved, the issue is marked as resolved. All notes back and forth remain for archival purposes.