Timeline
Oct 2022 - Nov 2023
Role
Lead UX designer
Employer
Optum Rx
Redesigning public experience for millions of pharmacy members.
Team composition
UX Design
Lead + support designer
UI Design
2 visual designers
Content
2 copywriters
Partners
1 project manager
The objective of this initiative was nominally to provide a visual refresh of Optum Rx’s legacy unauthenticated experience. However, upon a systemic audit of the existing environment, the project evolved from a cosmetic update into a strategic intervention.
I identified a critical failure in content governance (i.e., "ownerless" pages and fragmented information architecture) that resulted in outdated and misleading healthcare information on live web pages.
By reframing the project from a UI task to a knowledge-management challenge, I standardized the information architecture (IA) and developed a scalable sitemap designed to reduce cognitive load for members navigating high-stress healthcare journeys.
The primary tension of this project was not found in the interface, but in the lack of clear ownership for the legacy content; I discovered that a variety of support pages were being updated without a central authority, leading to a state of "information decay." In a healthcare context, this is not merely a usability issue but also an ethical one. Misleading or incorrect information regarding policies and digital experiences directly undermines members’ autonomy and trust.
This discovery created a misalignment between the project's perceived scope and its actual requirements. While leadership initially viewed the initiative as needing merely a "visual polish," my analysis of the cross-navigation and content structure revealed that the underlying architecture was fundamentally broken. The challenge, therefore, became a balancing act: delivering the immediate visual expectations of the business while advocating for a structural overhaul that would ensure the long-term integrity of the information provided to the public.
Scope & parameters
Audited legacy content to identify and eliminate outdated, ownerless, or misleading healthcare data.
Restructured the unauthenticated experience to maintain established design conventions & mental models while overhauling critical support paths.
Navigated HIPAA and healthcare compliance constraints to ensure member autonomy & comprehension.
Leveraged existing analytics & traffic data to prioritize the redesign of high-traffic pages over low-value legacy content.
Proposal & refinement
Initial proposal
I proposed a community-driven help forum and an abstract self-service model to mitigate the need to maintain & update static support content as the authenticated experiences they describe continue to change.
The rationale was twofold: first, to shift the maintenance burden away from business owners and toward a moderated community; and second, to create a real-time feedback loop where upvoted member questions would serve as a data signal for identifying new product pain points.
Scalable standardization
Despite the long-term value of a community model, the immediate business constraints, as well as technical limitations and the need for human moderators, necessitated a more traditional approach. The decision was made to prioritize the delivery of a revamped & standardized IA with a scalable sitemap.
Rational compromise
I landed on this trade-off since an FAQ needed to be established first until there was substantial user-generated content within the forum. By first establishing a standardized and scalable sitemap & IA, I ensured the foundation was stable for future iterations.
While we sacrificed the real-time feedback loop of a forum, we gained an immediate reduction in member frustration and a significant increase in information integrity.
This decision ensured that the immediate needs of the members were met with accuracy, while providing a structural blueprint that could support more dynamic self-service tools in the future.
To resolve the conflict between convoluted pharmacy information and user cognitive load, I approached the redesign not as a UI update, but as an exercise in applied information theory. My approach was derivative from Sophia Prater’s object-oriented UX (OOUX) framework — a content strategy of identifying core objects and their related details in order to thematically group them for page structure and cross navigation.
Given members typically visit help & support resources while in high-stress circumstances, I recognized that members did not need an exhaustive manual upon entry; they needed a clear navigation and information scents for common challenges and a direct route to real-time support. I utilized my OOUX framework for the help & support sitemap and IA, prioritizing common challenges, nesting complex regulatory and policy information in logically relevant locations, and ensured that the most critical support paths were easily accessible and intuitive. This approach shifted the experience from a static repository of documents to a dynamic guide, allowing members the chance to self-serve while also providing easy routes for immediate support.
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
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%
Legacy screens
Optum Rx | Home
(Waybackmachine - legacy)
Optum Rx | Contact us
(Waybackmachine - legacy)
Optum Rx | Account support
(Waybackmachine - legacy)
Desktop wire | Home
Underlying structure
The foundational wireframe maintained the established conventions (i.e., login widget in the hero) that matched pre-existing mental models while also allowing for the redesigned page structure to have greater flexibility.
By applying the OOUX framework, I elevated high-traffic tasks, features, and flows while balancing brand trust & promotional content — ensuring a high signal-to-noise ratio.
Redesign | Home
Visual experience
The final visual design fleshed out the member-facing experience, reinforcing the underlying OOUX framework encased in a modern & fresh aesthetic without compromising critical support paths & content.
Redesign | Contact us
Self-service & support
The new ‘Contact Us’ experience balances self-service for common questions with standardized answers while also allowing for clear paths for more immediate support that keeps in mind the urgent circumstances members might be facing while viewing this page.
Redesign | 'Manage your account' article
Scalable standardization
The complete overhaul of the article pages (e.g., Manage your account) to eliminate the fragmented, ‘ownerless’ feel of the legacy pages led to a new structure that provides a clear, thematic grouping of reference information that is equipped to efficiently handle future updates in the authenticated experience without breaking the IA.
Looking back at the Rx Public Pages initiative, the most enduring lesson was the realization that in healthcare, the distance between a user and the truth is often a design problem. The "information decay" I uncovered was not merely a failure of documentation, but a contributor to members’ highly stressful situations as they encounter outdated or contradictory information. Their autonomy is diminished, and their trust in the provider is eroded.
While the delivered solution — namely, a standardized IA and scalable sitemap — successfully reduced friction and provided a strong foundation, it highlighted a fundamental tension in enterprise UX: the conflict between static, business-generated content and the ongoing flexibility & agility of user-generated feedback. My initial proposal for a community-driven forum was an attempt to solve for this tension by opening a channel for the members to support one another in addition to expert help, thereby creating a robust support hub.
Although the constraints of the time necessitated a more traditional, static approach, this project solidified my belief on the importance of a strong foundation that underpins a fleshed-out & modern interface. True human flourishing (Eudaimonia) in a digital experience occurs when the system is transparent, reciprocal, and adjusts to the needs of the people it serves. Moving forward, I view every IA challenge not as a layout problem to be solved, but as necessary scaffolding to be tackled first for any experience.
Strategic outcomes
Eliminated fragmented "ownerless" content, significantly reducing the risk of misleading healthcare information on live pages.
Reduced cognitive load by maintaining existing conventions alongside effective thematic grouping, allowing members to navigate high-stress journeys more efficiently.
Delivered a standardized content template that ensures future authenticated experience updates can be implemented without breaking the IA.