Timeline
Oct 2022 - Nov 2023
Role
Lead UX designer
Employer
Optum Rx
Redesigning public experience for millions of pharmacy members.
Millions of Optum Rx pharmacy members expect the public pages to answer key questions (e.g., “Can I track my prescription order?” “What’s covered by my plan?” “How do I contact support?”), but outdated, inconsistent pages often left those questions unresolved, pushing many members to call the pharmacy instead.
With 92% of traffic landing on the login page and <1% engagement on most other pages, members were bypassing self-service entirely, indicating that the site functioned more as a gate to authentication than a source of help, driving avoidable support costs and delaying access to medication information.
Key facts
Legacy pages were off-brand & inconsistent
Logging in was the primary user intent
Healthcare & HIPAA constraints applied
Most pages had >1% of usage
Users & goals
Important considerations
HIPAA compliance for page content
Outdated support articles & resources
Inconsistent page layout & structure
Benefits & Pharmacy Services steering
1
Primary users
Pharmacy members seeking prescription information, formulary details, and account access.
General behavior
Most arrive intending to log in, often from bookmarks or employer links, and only seek help content or support when something goes wrong.
Business goals
Emphasize login entry points
Align public pages with brand standards
Improve self-service support resources
2
Secondary users
HR administrators, healthcare providers, and prospective members.
General behavior
Often land via search or marketing links, skim to confirm offerings or contact entry points, and bounce quickly if navigation is unclear.
Business goals
Improve clarity for sitemap & navigation
Increase engagement for prospective members
Maintain HIPAA compliance and requirements
Team & role
Team composition
UX Design
Lead + 1 support designer
UI Design
2 visual designers
Content
2 copywriters
Partners
1 project manager
My contributions
As lead UX designer, I drove the end-to-end redesign strategy within a tightly constrained environment. I led the content audit that identified 40+ redundant or outdated pages, then partnered with copywriters to consolidate them into a streamlined information architecture. I also advocated for a mobile‑first responsive approach despite 74% desktop traffic, anticipating that the 24% mobile segment was having a disproportionately poor experience compared to the already‑optimized authenticated flows.
I facilitated design reviews with our internal team and stakeholders for the public pages, ensuring accessibility requirements were integrated early rather than retrofitted. My role bridged UX enhancements and technical feasibility, translating ideal user flows into pattern‑compliant layouts without compromising core usability.
User research for this project was extremely limited because team ownership and scope were in flux. For much of the project, it was unclear which design team owned the public experience, which made it difficult to secure support for member studies.
In that environment, I focused on the evidence we did have: six months of analytics showing where members actually went, a content and IA audit of 40+ legacy pages, and a competitive review of three major pharmacy sites. Together, these gave us enough direction to make evidence‑informed decisions even without direct member interviews or usability tests.
Constraints
Only 6 months of available analytics
Most pages saw >1% of usage
No points of contact for most legacy experiences
Highlighted analytics
Top 3 pages
The login page dominated traffic at 92%, while all other pages combined drew less than 8% of visitors.
Landing
92%
Covid-19 kit
2%
Track order
2%
Device usage
With 24% of traffic coming from mobile devices without any mobile optimization, we treated responsive design as a core requirement rather than a nice‑to‑have. Despite desktop dominance, nearly a quarter of visitors were on mobile—a user group whose experience had effectively been ignored in the legacy design.
Desktop
Mobile
Tablet
Legacy screens
Optum Rx | Home
(Waybackmachine - legacy)
Optum Rx | Contact us
(Waybackmachine - legacy)
Optum Rx | Account support
(Waybackmachine - legacy)
Competitor Analysis
Express Scripts | Home
CenterWell | Home
Caremark | Home
Summary
All competitors followed a nearly identical landing page formula: hero image and prominent login with quick actions (e.g., order tracker, refill). Competitors differed mainly in support options (chat vs. phone) and educational content (blogs vs. FAQs).
Their landing pages validated our decision to preserve Optum Rx’s existing hero‑login pattern —keeping the convention familiar for existing members — while focusing on improved educational content structure and mobile optimization.
Share commonalities
Select unauthenticated experiences
Prominent sign-in CTA
Robust self-service resources
Approach
Content audit
Catalogued all existing pages, identified redundancies, and mapped content to user needs and business goals.
Information architecture
Restructured navigation & web pages with clear hierarchies, intuitive labels, and reduced cognitive load for users.
Responsive layouts
Designed responsive components that prioritized mobile experience while scaling gracefully to desktop.
Wireframes & mockups
Desktop wire | Home
Redesign | Home
Redesign | Home (mobile)
Redesign | Contact us
Redesign | Account support
Key design decisions
Decision
Maintained consistent hero layout
Rationale
Primary use case was logging in for existing members through the legacy hero
Outcomes
Preserved hero conventions
Reduced unnecessary whitespace
Decision
Object-oriented UX approach
Rationale
Resource & support pages needed heavy rework for both the sitemap & navigation
Outcomes
Decreased redundant content
Removed outdated resources
Decision
Contextual deep-linking for authenticated experiences
Rationale
Support pages had instructional content for authenticated experiences
Outcomes
Seamless transition after login
Lower cognitive load on working memory
What went well
Strong collaboration between design, content, and engineering teams
Data-driven approach validated design decisions early
Updated information architecture & sitemap was far less redundant and more consistent
What I'd do differently
Conduct five short guerrilla interviews with stakeholders to clarify terminology and key content updates
Involve analytics engineers earlier in the design process to ensure proper data tracking
Schedule more frequent stakeholder check-ins to manage expectations
Moving forward
Apply navigation header & footer layout & structure to other enterprise platforms
Explore chat support & other self-service features for more robust user resources
Projected impact
While post-launch analytics were not available to me, the redesign significantly improved how the public experience was structured and reused. The new IA and component library reduced redundancy across pages, clarified pathways to login and help content, and established a header/footer pattern that could scale across other Optum platforms.
The introduction of responsive layouts — where none previously existed — also meant that nearly a quarter of visitors on mobile devices now had a dedicated experience, rather than a broken desktop view squeezed onto a small screen.
Success indicators
Clearer navigation paths & fewer redundant pages
Responsive layouts replacing desktop-only templates
Core features (e.g., login, order tracking, help) surfaced on the landing page
Header & footer patterns reused by other Optum platforms