Launched in 2021, the app quickly gained high praise with an average rating of 4.8/5 in the App and Play Store. However, by 2023, usage data revealed a retention issue. Some Veterans weren’t finding enough value in the app to return after their first use. While the original VA mobile app home screen displayed personal information and provided access to all parts of the app, it wasn’t tailored to individual Veterans’ needs. Veterans weren’t being proactively informed about critical actions they needed to take, and many didn’t fully understand the app's capabilities. 

The main issues included:

• Lack of Proactive Notifications: Veterans weren’t being informed in a timely way about critical actions they needed to take. 
• Limited Understanding: Many Veterans had inaccurate expectations about what the app could offer.
• Lack of Overview: Veterans struggled to get a quick overview of ongoing tasks or interactions with VA, such as appointments or claims. 
• Limited Support for Life Transitions: The app didn’t address the unique circumstances of Veterans going through major life events like moving or getting married, leaving them unsure of what VA services they could access.

To address these issues, the team’s goal was to personalize the home screen to deliver tailored content and improve retention by surfacing more value for each Veteran based on their individual needs and status with VA.

VA mobile app, July 2023

MY ROLE:

UX Strategy, Interaction Design, User Research
As UX Lead, I was responsible for defining the UX strategy, interaction design, and user research. I led the effort to bring personalization to the home screen of the app, working closely with product managers, engineers, and visual designers.
My primary responsibilities included:

• Defining the UX Strategy: I collaborated with product to define a northstar for a personalization approach in the VA mobile app as well as the approach for integrating personalization into the app’s home screen, including what content to prioritize and how to present it.

• Leading User Research: I conducted both discovery research and qualitative research to better understand Veterans' needs and test our design hypothesis.
  
• Designing the Product Architecture: I worked with product and engineering to define the functional requirements for the MVP and created wireframes for the product’s architecture, uniting health and benefits feature data as a holistic system and fleshing out home screen’s appearance logic.
• Collaboration: I coordinated closely with cross-functional teams to ensure the new feature met both user and business goals, while adhering to the technical constraints of the app.
  

IMPACT:

The personalized home screen launched in July 2024 with measurable success.

Key impacts included:

• Improved Retention: User retention increased by 6%, a key success metric for the project.
  
• Positive Feedback: Veteran users praised the new design for being easier to navigate and more informative.

• Increased Engagement: Prescription refill rates increased by 62%, and unread message read rates rose by 5%, indicating that Veterans were engaging more actively with their app content.
  
• Streamlined App Usage: Claims and appointment page views dropped by 4% and 2%, respectively, showing that the personalized content on the home screen was reducing unnecessary navigation and helping users quickly find what they needed.