Vida Corretora de Planos de Saúde is a company located in the city of Natal, Brazil, known as the city of the sun.
How to build a self-service health plan purchasing platform with just one designer and one developer?
In order to differentiate itself in the competitive health plan sales market, Vida Corretora decided that it needed a quick and agile way to offer and market its health plans, unlike the traditional model.
The solution envisioned was an online sales system, based on the company’s website, which would allow the user to make their choices autonomously, sending their request and, only at the time of signing the contract, having the service of a salesperson.
Therefore, the design objectives were defined as being:
Basically, my role in this project was to develop an interface for the desktop web version.
Therefore, as a designer I was limited to aspects such as:
The first step in the design process was to understand the important limitations we would have to face in order to deliver a solution. And we almost didn’t go into shock! The reality was that:
After accepting the challenge, the first thing to do was to understand the scope and align expectations with the development team, which had only one very experienced software engineer, who built the order management platform practically alone.
In several meetings with the CEO, I came to understand the problem and realized that the challenge was very interesting. He needed to create something that did not yet exist in the market in which the company operated. Not in the region.
He wanted to sell health plans, from several companies, through a website, to people in the northeast region of Brazil. Wow!
Vida Corretora de Planos de Saúde is a small company located in the city of Natal, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. Its target audience is basically the citizen of the northeast region, women, between 35 and 55 years old. And in the CEO’s experience, we should consider that he wasn’t the kind of person who was natively familiar with technologies.
With this in mind, it became clear that we should create an interface with images, not just icons or just text, that would represent each option in the flow of products and categories to be chosen, in order to facilitate semiotics.
Andrea Medeiros, 39 years old, married to Rodrigo, father of Lucas (10 years old) and Gabi (8 years old), has a degree in pedagogy but does not practice the profession.
Owner of a small clothing store, she lives in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte. It currently employs 3 employees, for whom it offers a health plan with co-payment.
She likes to watch the news, listen to music (her favourite singer is Marília Mendonça), romantic series and dramas. When she has free time, she spends time in front of the TV. That’s why she’s a Netflix subscriber.
Her monthly income is around R$7,000.00 and R$15,000.00. Varying whether it is a good or bad month for store sales. Andrea always chooses to have leisure with her family. She seeks to have a light life, without the unnecessary stress and away from confusion and controversy.
She says that one sentence never leaves her head:
“Ease is the name that vagabonds give to the effort of others.”
Carnal Leandro.
The customers prospected by the company received many proposals in the most diverse channels, but, due to so much information, they had difficulty of making their choices.
In addition, receiving calls, flyers and TV advertising did not give customers the chance to choose to know the details and only then make a purchase decision.
In this way, we identified the following main persona pains:
I would like to have access to several health plan options, and do simulations to raise prices and coverage before deciding to buy.
Gostaria de oferecer um plano de saúde para seus funcionários como pacote de benefícios.
You need to consider the cost-benefit for your company.
• People have little access to multiple health plans. • There are no well-structured online options in the region. • Customers like to choose their health plan patiently, doing calculations and talking as a family. • Entrepreneurs who offer health plans to their employees need to run simulations to decide which option is best in terms of cost-effectiveness.
• Creating an online tool for simulating health plans will increase our needs. • It is easier to sell to a customer who already has the information about the plans. • It becomes economical to have a more reliable online service tool. • If the customer, at the end of the simulation, still has doubts, he may give up the process.
• Will your customers be able to easily access and run simulations on the site? • Will customers prefer to use the site rather than ask for a consultant to be present? • How to connect the simulation result with the closing of the sale? • If you still have doubts, at the end of the simulation, how to connect a consultant to the client?
Working with a small team to develop such a complex solution helped me get to know myself better and understand my limitations. It’s always easier when there are several hands to take care of each step, each delivery.
In this project, I had to do all the design tasks until delivery to the developer. In a relatively short time.
Obviously many edges were left to be trimmed, however, the project brought the return that the client expected and, perhaps because I worked so hard, in 2021 he came to me so that we can redesign the platform, to trim such edges.
