Annual Enrollment Insights

Evaluating the end-to-end enrollment experience to identify friction and measure the impact of product improvements

Challenge

Throughout the year, research informed improvements across different parts of the annual enrollment experience. However, evaluating individual features and interactions didn't tell us how well those changes worked together across the full journey.

We needed to understand how employees navigated their actual benefits enrollment from start to finish, identify friction that emerged across the experience, and determine whether the changes made throughout the year had meaningfully improved enrollment.

Because client configurations varied, the study also provided an opportunity to uncover usability issues that might not appear within the standard experience.

Approach

I began by reviewing research conducted throughout the year to identify key enrollment challenges, product changes, and questions that couldn't be fully answered through individual studies. Because I led research for the Health & Insurance domain, I was able to connect findings across projects and identify areas that warranted further evaluation during the end-to-end enrollment experience.

From there, I developed a research framework focused on both behavior and comprehension, including whether introductory content improved understanding, how employees interpreted plan costs, and whether recommended plans influenced their decision-making.

I partnered with Product Owners to align on research priorities and incorporate additional questions from their teams. During the study, we observed employees completing their actual benefits enrollment, allowing us to evaluate how individual product decisions performed together within the full experience and uncover friction that wasn't visible during isolated prototype testing.

Insights & Impact

The observations showed that improvements made throughout the year were contributing to a better overall enrollment experience. Across all three participating companies, employees rated their experience an average of 5.5 out of 7, compared with 4.7 the previous year.

The study also uncovered an important gap between perception and behavior. Employees consistently described the Benefits Summary as helpful because it allowed them to compare their current coverage and costs with their selections for the upcoming year. However, during observation, one employee nearly completed enrollment without selecting medical coverage.

This revealed that while the summary experience was well received, it wasn't always effective at drawing attention to missing or incomplete coverage. The finding highlighted an opportunity to make coverage gaps more visible through clearer indicators or reminders—particularly for critical benefits such as medical insurance.