Product Design Intern @ Justworks:

Helping small business employees thrive while navigating major life changes







PROJECT SUMMARY
Justworks is a software tech company that helps small businesses and entrepreneurs grow with confidence by managing their employees and operations, such as payroll and benefits. As the company grows into a multi-product organization, its goal is to make experience a competitive edge and lay the groundwork for future automation.

My primary project focused on redesigning the legacy employee insurance update process, enabling employees of small businesses to access high-quality health benefits during major life changes while delivering a consistent user experience across its product ecosystem.
OUTCOMES

  • Delivered user research results, dev-ready interactive prototype using Justworks design system, and presented at company-wide intern demo day
  • Designed and shipped key flow of plan selection onboarding experience with an engineer peer as a side project, reducing onboarding time and support requests. Recognized by managers across multiple teams




MY ROLE
Product Design Intern 
TEAM
2 Product Managers
Content Designer
Software Engineers
Business OperationsTIMELINE
06. 2024 - 08. 2024TOOLS
Figma
User-Testing.com





• Background •

Life can be unpredictable because of many key events. Ex. birth of a child, relocate to new area, getting married, etc.






These events are called as Qualifying Life Events (QLEs).


Significant life changes that make individuals eligible to make health insurance changes or updates outside the annual open enrollment period. 






Current experience & Impact Opportunities




Justworks provides two platforms to 11,000+ small businesses to manage their workforce benefit, enabling 174,000+ number of employee to manage high quality health benefit directly on the platforms. 

To align with the initiative of making experience a competitive edge, there’s a need to improve and streamline the 7 years old legacy flow because:

There are lots of questions and complains on the complexity and lack of clarity of current insurance update process

Background





Qualifying Life Event IRL

Significant life changes that make individuals eligible to make health insurance changes or updates outside the annual open enrollment period.





These events are called as Qualifying Life Events (QLEs).


Significant life changes that make individuals eligible to make health insurance changes or updates outside the annual open enrollment period.








Current experience & Impact Opportunities




As of today, Justworks has two platforms for 1000+ small businesses to manage their workforce, with a total of 174,000+ number of employee on the platforms. 








The goals for the Benefit Team is platform & process unification

  1. Making Experience a Competitive Advantage: Offer a cohesive, end-to-end Justworks experience to customers and their employee, giving them a peace of mind during life transition
  2. Streamlining Qualifying Life Events (QLEs) processing: simplify the QLE process to reduce costs without scaling linearly and lay the groundwork for future automation, enabling Justworks to operate more efficiently.





HMW

Redefine employees’ Qualifying Life Event (QLE) request experience, and create a single and seamless platform for both PEO and Payroll?

Research




Starting with auditing the legacy flows and information architecture of both platforms 



I reached out to internal stakeholders (product mangers, operations, and customer support team) to pull relevant data and insights on what works well, and current pain points where employee needs the most support. 

Working closely with content designer, we formulated hypotheses to inform the design of prototypes:



01. Guiding Employees Through a Complex Process
Employees need clear guidance through the QLE request process due to its complexity - involving time-sensitive deadlines, extensive documentation, and multi-step procedures. This is especially overwhelming for employees navigating the QLE process for the first time.


02. Employee’s Mental Modal

When life changes occur, employees think about modifying their insurance coverage rather than specifically “requesting for QLE”





Prototyping for User Testing




Creating low-fi prototypes to gain external user feedback



Colloborating with content designer, we designed prototypes based on our hypothesis and feedback from internal stakeholders, and validated with potential user on Usertesting.com.  

01. User Testing Objective
  • Validate employee mental model when a QLE happen
  • Understand if users know the action they need to take for each step
  • User’s response to view and select new insurance plans before receive admin’s approved
  • Identify areas of improvement for content, including their voice and tone


02. Participants Criteria

  • Employee who currently has health insurance with their company
  • Employee who has access to any HR platform with their company
  • Age: 20 - 50 years old
  • Location: Currently living in the US
  • Used to request QLE (Optional)






VERSION A


VERSION B




Key Insights




INSIGHT #1

Instead of “Requesting QLE”, the first thing that came to people’s mind is: “I want to change my insurance”

INSIGHT #2

Employee only knows the term “QLE”  when they have prior experiences of submitting QLE.


INSIGHT #3

When QLE happened, instead of “requesting for QLE”, the first thing came to people’s mind is to make change to their insurance

Stepping Back




Taking closer look at the QLE cases as I become more familiar with the product



I was able to spot more nuances within the current experience, and external constraints for different QLE.

Based on resources and discussion from operation and customer support, I categorized all QLE cases into three case groups based on what users are required to submit: 


CASE GROUP #1

Employee can select one from a few documents to submit


CASE GROUP #2

 Employee can select one from a few documents to submit


CASE GROUP #3

Employee need to submit required documents, plus supporting documents from a few options



Some Design Highlights




HIGHLIGHT #1

Breaking down long, taxing form into smaller steps, setting expectation for each step 







HIGHLIGHT #2

Match the design with people’s mental model. Start the process by asking: “What changes do you need to make?”









HIGHLIGHT #3
Opportunity to explore new insurance option ahead of time, so that employee can feel more confident with their changes


Final Design & Prototype





Eileen Feng
Summer Intern @ Justworks