Redesigning Medicare's coverage experience through a scalable content system
The redesign drove 1.78M user sessions in 90 days, with a 10-point year-over-year jump in likelihood to return.
Overview
Redesigned Medicare.gov's coverage section to help millions of beneficiaries more easily understand their benefits, estimate costs, and find trustworthy information.
Problem
Users struggled to understand what their benefits included, estimate costs, and find reliable answers. Many turned to call centers or third-party sources, indicating gaps in both content clarity and findability.
Goals
User Goals
Understand what Medicare covers and what it doesn’t
Estimate costs with confidence
Quickly find accurate information through search or browsing
Avoid dead ends and confusing navigation
Business Goals
Establish a scalable, maintainable content system
Launch in time for Open Enrollment
Reduce reliance on call centers through improved self-service
My Role
Lead Designer responsible for facilitating discovery, synthesizing research, defining the design approach, iterating on solutions, and collaborating closely with product, engineering, and content teams through implementation and testing.
Synthesizing from discovery workshops helped us prioritize content updates
Approach
Discovery & research
We combined Adobe Analytics, call center data, survey feedback, a heuristics review, and a content audit. A key analysis mapped top search queries against call center topics, revealing strong overlap — users were not lacking content, but struggling to find and understand it effectively.
DESIGN
Given an accelerated timeline, we moved quickly from wireframes to interactive prototypes in Figma, iterating through three major design cycles.
Key directions explored:
A modular content system for scalability
Improved navigation patterns
Clearer content hierarchy for readability
Enhanced search and A-Z browsing for multiple entry points
User testing
Usability testing with 16 Original Medicare beneficiaries validated the overall direction. Findings reinforced the importance of clear labeling, scannable content, and intuitive navigation patterns, which informed refinements to the final design.
BEFORE: BROWSING
AFTER: BROWSING
Solution
We delivered a redesigned experience centered around a modular content system. This approach improved both the user experience and the long-term maintainability of the site.
Key components included:
A new navigational landing page to help users orient and choose paths
Improved search and A-Z browsing for flexible entry points
Modular content components optimized for readability and consistency
A scalable structure supporting both users and content editors in Drupal
Impact
Results indicate improved findability, clearer content structure, and reduced friction in navigating coverage information.
1.78M user sessions in the first 90 days post-launch
CSAT increased by 7 points to 72% in 90 days
Likelihood to return increased by 10 points year-over-year
44% of traffic from search engines (vs. 25% sitewide), indicating improved discoverability
Bounce rate reduced to 5% on the landing page (vs. 31% section-wide and 37% sitewide)
BEFORE: LANDING PAGE
AFTER: LANDING PAGE
BEFORE: SEARCH
AFTER: SEARCH
Learnings
Cross-functional alignment is critical. The most effective progress happened when UX, engineering, and content worked together continuously rather than in silos.
Designing systems scales impact. The modular approach not only improved the user experience but also made the content easier to manage.
Mobile remains an opportunity. Post-launch data showed mobile satisfaction significantly lagging desktop (49% vs. 72%), pointing to a clear next area of investment — and a case for continued qualitative research.
