Going digital didn’t deter fraudulent claims

Some long-term care customers and their care providers exploited paper-based claim submission methods, costing John Hancock millions in fraudulent claim payouts. 

To curb this, the company launched the CareGiver App for digital submissions—but over 90% still relied on paper. Why?

Poor UX and trust issues derailed adoption

Research revealed that care providers avoided the app due to poor UX, login issues, and workflow disruptions while attending to patients. John Hancock’s fraud controls added to their frustration with constant verifications.

Meanwhile, LTC customers and their families preferred digital claims but found the process too cumbersome, reverting to paper.

Shifting perspectives: Brainstorming to balance convenience with trust and security

I led a workshop to help the team rethink the app from a human-centered perspective, focusing on the jobs to be done and the broader caregiving ecosystem. This wasn’t just brainstorming ideas together—it was also a shift in mindset. 

Instead of seeing the app only as a tool to catch fraud, the team began to empathize with caregivers and LTC customers, balancing convenience and people’s needs with necessary checks to build trust while effectively filtering out bad actors.

Prioritization: engaging stakeholders to shape the roadmap

The workshop generated a wealth of ideas, which I helped prioritize into quick wins, concepts for testing, and future roadmap items.

To align on these priorities, I facilitated a session with the stakeholders including business leaders and executives, refining the concepts and ensuring a shared understanding of their impact, effort and feasibility.

Targeting the quick wins: a no-brainer for reducing barriers to entry

To boost adoption, I streamlined the end-to-end onboarding for the Caregiver app, simplifying provider registration, easing customer access to authorize digital claims, fixing login issues, enabling biometric login, enhancing the in-app tour, and allowing care providers to set shift-specific rates—removing barriers for easier use.

We also promoted the app to increase visibility and drive adoption as part of the design strategy. As a result, adoption increased by 20%, and t-NPS scores improved by 30% within three months of implementing these enhancements.

Testing high-impact, high-effort ideas with storyboards to iterate and refine

For the long-term roadmap, we prioritized high-impact ideas requiring significant technology and effort investment, testing them with care providers and LTC customers to ensure they met their needs effectively.

A key focus was using geolocation tracking to automate care session logging via the app—streamlining and automating digital claim submission for customers while enhancing accuracy of claim payouts and enabling fraud prevention for the business.

Storyboards helped care providers and customers visualize how they would use the app in real-world scenarios, allowing them to give detailed feedback for improvements while accounting for each users’ perspective. This enabled me to refine various use cases and translate insights into higher-fidelity designs.

Caregiver App 2.0 as an ecosystem: Leveraging patterns, simplifying processes

Designed for care patterns and networks

The proposal for the new version of the Caregiver App adopted a service design approach, addressing the complexities of caregiving networks between care providers and customers. 

X.COM    LINKEDIN    FACEBOOK

Automating care tracking to reduce effort

It explored factors such as whether care providers would enable geolocation and how the app integrates with the customer’s online account for bill approvals and payouts. 

X.COM    LINKEDIN    FACEBOOK

Re-imagined information architecture

This informed a redesign of the app’s information architecture to enhance intuitiveness, adaptability, and support across diverse real-world contexts.

The business continues to reap the benefits of the app’s redesign even today

By March 2023, I handed over the project and got involved in another initiative. However, the concepts I had designed & tested for Caregiver App 2.0 have been implemented.

$8 million

saved in fraudulent claim payouts as a result of app improvements & redesign. This significant cost-saving and efficiency continues to benefit the company. 

human-centered mindset

adopted by the team ever since—evaluating ideas with customers before developing new features and collecting feedback after release—a major cultural shift.

Congratulations on being one of the select few in our Company to be nominated for a 2023 Star of Excellence award! You clearly made a significant impression among your peers who took the time to nominate you and recognize your dedication to making decisions easier and lives better by redesigning the CareGiver App.

Your dedication and commitment to helping us become the most digital customer-focused company is noticed - thank you for being such a valued member of our winning team! Roy

Roy Gori

Global CEO, Manulife & John Hancock

Ipsita continues to drive the app redesign with impressive skills and leadership. My gratitude for her partnership in and dedication to this experience is enormous!

Among the many ways that her ways of working, problem solving and thinking impress me, is her ability and passion for running through every complex user flow and thinking about the customer mindset every step of the way. The details of the mindset and the careful balance of business and user goals in the experience are so essential.

Thank you, Ipsita for switching between the macro and the micro at all the right time(s).

Suzanne Ackerman

Experience Design Lead & Manager
 

My growth as a designer through this project

The steep learning curve of this project pushed me far beyond the metaphorical drawing board. I became a strong advocate for our customers—translating research into stories that shifted mindsets and built empathy across stakeholders and executives.

By bringing them into the process through presentations and hands-on workshops, I fostered deeper collaboration. I learned that prioritization isn’t just about scope—it's about building trust, aligning visions, and delivering outcomes that resonate.

Curious to go deeper? Inspired by something you saw?
Whether you have a collaboration in mind, are seeking mentorship, or just want to chat about design, I believe in the magic of human conversation.
Let’s grow, learn, and imagine what’s possible—together :)

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