# Shopping for health insurance

- Org: Aetna · via EffectiveUI (2014–15)
- Role: Senior UX Designer at EffectiveUI · led the design effort
- Timeframe: About 6 months, 2014–15
- Status: My last project at EffectiveUI; I left before launch
- Focus: UX research, Product strategy, Visual design
- Access: summary public; the full case study unlocks with a password from Seth's application, or on request
- URL: https://sethgerard.com/work/aetna

Aetna's “Shop, Buy, Enroll”: helping people choose a health plan on their own after the Affordable Care Act, starting from the questions they actually ask.

Insurance is a promise you buy before you need it.
How do you help someone choose one on their own?

The Affordable Care Act opened a new kind of market: people buying health insurance directly, many of them for the first time, without an employer or a broker to guide them. Aetna wanted to meet them there with “Shop, Buy, Enroll,” a direct-to-consumer path from browsing plans to enrolling in one. At EffectiveUI I led the design effort, my last project there.

This is older work, from 2014–15, and the screens look their age. I keep it because the problem hasn't changed: the questions people asked us then are the ones benefits companies are still answering today.