Clarifying Medicare Advantage

Making a complex Medicare experience easier to understand and navigate.

Challenge

While evaluating the retirement experience, the design team identified the need for a new form to collect Medicare information from retirees and their spouses as part of the Medicare Advantage enrollment process.

Because retirees would complete this process annually, the team wanted to ensure the form was easy to understand and complete. We needed to determine whether users understood the information being requested, could distinguish between questions about themselves and their spouse, and could recognize when required information—such as a physical address—was missing.

The goal was to identify potential usability and comprehension issues before the new experience was released.

Approach

Because the form was designed specifically for Medicare users, I initially focused recruitment on retirees who were enrolled in or eligible for Medicare. Early sessions with retirees who did not have Medicare experience showed that they lacked the context needed to meaningfully evaluate the form, including why certain information was being requested and what some of the terminology meant.

To reach the appropriate audience, I shifted recruitment to our internal participant pool and successfully recruited three Medicare users. Although the final sample was smaller than planned, speaking with participants who had direct Medicare experience provided much more relevant feedback.

During the sessions, screen-sharing presented a challenge for some participants, so I adapted the methodology from a traditional usability test to a contextual interview. I shared the form from my screen and asked participants to walk me through how they interpreted the content, terminology, and required information.

This approach allowed me to identify areas of confusion and gather detailed feedback despite the recruitment and technical constraints of the study.

Insights & Impact

Despite the small sample size, the study uncovered consistent usability issues that directly informed the form's redesign.

Terminology didn't match users' real-world materials.

All three participants were confused by the term “Medicare Beneficiary Identifier” because their Medicare cards labeled the same information as “Medicare Number”. Although the form included help content showing users where to locate the number, matching the terminology on their cards would reduce confusion and unnecessary effort.

The design team later confirmed that newer Medicare cards would use “Medicare Beneficiary Identifier,” while some users would continue to have cards using the older terminology. I recommended displaying both terms and retaining the illustrated example so the experience would remain clear for users regardless of which version of the card they had.

The form didn't clearly distinguish between the retiree and spouse.

Participants questioned why they were being asked to enter Medicare start dates twice because they didn't realize the second set of questions applied to their spouse. This created frustration and introduced the risk of users entering information for the wrong person.

These findings, along with additional issues identified during the study, informed a redesigned form with clearer visual separation between retiree and spouse information. The updated design was prepared for another round of usability testing to evaluate whether the changes resolved the issues uncovered in the initial study.

If I could do this study again:

Recruiting Medicare participants proved more difficult than anticipated and limited the study to three participants. With additional time, I would begin recruitment earlier and confirm the availability of Medicare participants with our recruiting partners before launching the study.

If recruiting enough Medicare participants still wasn't possible, I would supplement the study with retirees and provide a detailed Medicare scenario and sample Medicare card. This would give participants the context and materials needed to move through the experience more independently while still prioritizing actual Medicare users whenever possible.

The recruiting challenges also revealed a broader research operations opportunity. After the study, I met with my manager to explore ways to grow our internal Medicare participant pool for future research. Ideas included recruiting Medicare users directly through relevant areas of the site and exploring whether existing feedback data could help identify potential participants while remaining compliant with privacy requirements.