Three User Portals

Problems to solve:

• Translating old system’s data model to the Salesforce platform.
• Creating a brand new experience for Veterans (who didn’t have a portal previously).
• Aligning file tracking with internal and external users along with Veterans
• Ensuring compliance (health records)
• Providing an accessible experience for all

Deliverables needed:

• Three unique portals, custom lightning components designed.
• Wireframes for each of the above, mobile first for the Veteran site.
• User journeys specifically aligning the internal, external, and customer’s journeys.
• User Personas for Veteran and Navigator (internal staff).
• Style guide for external developers.
• Various diagrams for aligning internal development staff with not-so-technically-savvy stakeholders in charge of departments. (I’m a good technical mediator!)

Constraints:

• Started project with no dedicated development staff, so I filled in as the developer for the custom lightning web components.
• Customers were not available for interviews, and the Navigator position was brand new, so didn’t have access to anyone who had worked in that role to understand experience and painpoints.
• The majority of staff were newly hired for their positions so historical knowledge and subject matter experts were difficult to find.
• Time to launch was a very short window.

Internal user, essentially a concierge after the sales process at REE.

Was a new job position, so did research by speaking with people who had similar job responsibility and skill overlap within the company.

These users would be internal Salesforce users, but would be the only support to Veterans, so would also need to understand how the portals worked.

User Persona: Veteran

Wireframes

Research done for creating wireframes:

• Using the information found when creating the personas, narrowed down some of the main painpoints from those findings to educate the designs in the Veterans’ Portal.
• Researched other methods that companies use for tracking a file. My favorite examples were from Turbo Tax and FedEx. Turbo Tax in particular had a lot of similar needs from their users, and they published some great findings on their design process for their most recent iteration of their service. The main item, allow the users to have access to a simplified set of statuses that add clarity to a very complicated system and give the users the tools to complete items themselves, thus providing the users ways to help themselves.
  • One major painpoint in the VA process that was found was that Veterans felt like they were helpless to a complicated process, and wanted to have more ability to complete tasks themselves.

Features for the Veteran portal created to solve problems:

Clarity on long, sometimes confusing processes:

Solved by providing customer specific statuses with descriptions that actually made sense and gave insight into what was happening.

Avoiding time specific statuses:

• Time specific statuses gave the impression that something was wrong if someone didn’t reach out to the customer.
  • • (Example: “Someone will reach out to you in 24 hours.” vs. “Your provider will reach out to you soon.”)
• Helped REE Staff and providers have flexibility to determine and balance priority. (Each provider was a separate clinic who might have different ways to manage their patients.)
• Visually represented with a timeline that helped to show where in the process the user was.
  

Tasks assigned by Navigators:

• Gave the ability for Veteran to work independently from REE staff and providers, thus giving the users more of the feeling that they have more control and ownership.

High Fidelity Wireframes

Mobile first, interactive mockup for the interview flow of a first time login.

Main features needed:

• With accessibility in mind for the experience, allowing the user to pick text size, color, and choose their notification style before logging into the experience cloud site.

First Round of Wireframes: Low-ish fidelity

• Three unique portals, custom lightning components designed.
• Wireframes for each of the above, mobile first for the Veteran site.

Main features needed:

• System for tracking the status of their file with REE.
• A list of tasks that were assigned to them from their Navigator.
• A location to upload documents.
• A way to check messages from their Navigator.
• A profile page.
• A help section.
• A way for the user to refer other Veterans.

Final Design: High Fidelity Wireframes

Mobile view: No Tasks to Complete

• This card view shows the card state when there are no tasks to complete by the user, and the History panel is closed.
• Below the DBQ card the user sees different rotating banner ad cards were added for displaying promotions, news, and other help prompts.
• At the very bottom of the page is a simple navigation.

High Fidelity Wireframes

Desktop and mobile view of the Veterans’ Portal Documents page.

• This page allows the user to view any documents they’ve uploaded, as well as drag and drop or upload any additional files.

Provider and Affiliate Portals:

(Not pictured due to NDA.)

• Provider Portal:
  • A portal that a medical facility could log into (sometimes several users under one facility) and view a list of:
    • New Veterans needing appointments set up.
    • Current Veterans already scheduled who would be seeing the provider.
    • Previous Veterans who had seen the provider but had changes to their file sent back from REE Staff members.
    • Billing: a list of months billed out from REE Medical to the provider.
  • A Veteran file page which would allow the Provider to schedule appointments, upload and update documentation, make requests to change documentation, and a location to contact the REE staff member in charge of the Veteran’s file.

Retrospective:

What would I do differently?

I would have insisted on meeting with more stakeholders, and asking even more questions. At the time, my supervisor was under the impression that more questions from our team made us look incompetent. On the contrary, more questions from our team would have avoided having to make last minute changes and additions which changed scope.

Created extremely low fidelity wireframes first (black and white boxes). I initially went a little too high fidelity, and the stakeholders got too focused on tiny things (why is this element that color?), when what I wanted was to drill down the feature set.

I would have tried to do more out of the box Salesforce lightning components, assuming we weren’t getting a development team. I think we could have then created custom components after we received the team, and it would have been launched sooner.

What am I proud of?

I’m proud of the overall product considering the constraints we were being put under. We were being expected to launch this custom project within a span of less than six months, at first just me and one product owner (who had some development skills), with access to only a few stakeholders who were fairly new at their positions. On top of this, the portal team was being given very little direction on the expectations from the business. I think we were very successful given these aspects.

The reaction from the customer facing teams were really what made me happy, and I felt like hearing the relief and gratitude for the product created was proof of our quality of work. Especially hearing that we were saving them time out of their very busy days, which allowed them to be more focused on providing the veterans care, was great.