Upon joining OptumRx to lead Design, I quickly recognized that my team of 30 talented researchers, designers, content strategists, front end developers and Accessibility experts had long been viewed internally as the design “delivery” team. Stakeholders saw the team as “the ones who deliver design for user stories.” Leaders did not see the Design team as people who could enable and lead discovery, cross-functional ideation and innovation.

I listened first, conducting one-on-ones with all 30 of my team members plus partners from Development, Product, Client, Operations and other teams. I also identified my team needed clearer DesignOps – ways of working. Over the course of 3 months we enabled a view of our team’s capacity, aligned designers to Product capabilities, implemented practices to retain our top talent and opened up capacity for Design Sprinting.

With the stage set to demonstrate the team’s Design mojo, we dove into data, ranging from contact center analytics, journey data and the “why” behind Net Promoter Scope (NPS) scores. My team identified key pain points and opportunities to make it easier for our 80 million members to manage their prescriptions. My team then led a Design Sprint to move from customer insights into visible ideas about future state possibilities for our landing experience. The concepts transformed the experience by showing how a member might immediately order from their dashboard, track orders with ease and immediate see ways to save money. This was all guided by new Design Principles I crafted with my leaders and our partners, to drive our Design mindset and hold ourselves and others accountable.

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Results

• Increased funding for Design due to increased leadership visibility to the impact of Design Thinking and Sprinting
• 25% Increase to Net Promoter Score via web app efficiency enhancements

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Artifacts