BlueCross Blueshield of Tennessee Broker Portal
PROJECT TYPE
UX Research, Architecture, Design, and Design System Expansion
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Tools
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Figma
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Teams
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UserZoom
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Qualtrics
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Miro
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Invision (Legacy)
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Sketch (Legacy)
BACKGROUND
BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee (BCBST) offers a suite of digital tools for members, brokers, and internal teams. While member-facing tools had undergone significant redesign efforts in the past, broker-facing tools and the supporting design system lagged behind in both usability and visual cohesion.
The existing designs and design system also lived within legacy tools; some already deprecated and others soon to be. There was not only a need to redesign and expand the system to support broker-specific needs, but also to transition the internal team to new platforms and prepare them to own and evolve the system moving forward.
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With inconsistent experiences across broker portal touch points and growing demands from broker partners, it was clear that a comprehensive modernization was needed, not only for the tools themselves, but for the foundational design system as well. The team was tasked with modernizing the experience and platforms while also introducing new features to help brokers work more efficiently.
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GOALS
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Understand broker workflows, needs, and pain points
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Modernize and unify the design system across audiences
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Transition the system from InVision and Sketch to Figma
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Extend the design system to support broker-specific components and flows
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Prepare the internal design team to take ownership of the new system
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Ensure continuous alignment with stakeholders and developers
"Link farm" version of the former experience
Research​
To ground our design efforts in real user needs, we began with both qualitative and quantitative research.
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QUALITATIVE INTERVIEWS
I led one-on-one interviews with a diverse group of brokers from across the state. These sessions gave us deep insight into their day-to-day tasks, their biggest friction points with the existing tools, and the visual cues they relied on for speed and clarity. We were able to validate a number of the proposed new features as well as communicate to stakeholders where some features were not seen as valuable or useful.
Interview sessions were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed to identify unique thoughts, reactions, and workflows. The transcriptions were then aggregated to highlight common patterns and recurring feedback. Results were presented to stakeholders with an emphasis on key insights around desired features and persistent friction points.
QUANTITATIVE SURVEYS
To validate what we were hearing and uncover broader patterns, we ran email surveys via Qualtrics. I wrote and administered the survey, targeting the entire broker user base and ensuring a statistically significant sample size at a 95% confidence level.
The responses helped us prioritize issues by frequency and impact, giving the team a solid data-backed foundation for design decisions. I also conducted a detailed analysis of the results—including coding and interpreting open-ended qualitative responses for recurring themes and outlier perspectives.
Together, our interviews and surveys increased stakeholder confidence in where to focus design efforts and laid the groundwork for restructuring the experience to address user needs as comprehensively as possible.
Qualitative and quantitative analyses were delivered via reports and presentation decks
CONTENT AUDIT
As a broker sales support tool, the portal contained hundreds of documents designed to assist brokers, and ultimately members, in understanding a wide range of insurance products. These included offerings across multiple markets, from large employer groups to individual and government-assisted plans.
The number and type of documents available was constantly evolving, with annual and semi-annual updates and no clear method of categorization, discoverability, or governance.
A significant effort was undertaken to catalog every document and its path, in order to build a system that was both comprehensive and user-friendly. I led the cataloging effort and worked closely with internal team members to create an organizational structure that could support both current and future content.
We collaborated across teams to understand all the potential access points for this content, whether embedded within workflows or browsed independently, and evaluated multiple approaches for integration. This work culminated in a shared vision for how a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system could be implemented and seamlessly integrated into the redesigned experience, laying the groundwork for long-term content scalability and governance.
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DESIGN SYSTEM TRANSITION
The design system at BCBST previously lived in InVision and Sketch, with a focus on member-facing tools. As part of this effort, we transitioned the system to Figma and significantly expanded it to support broker experiences.
This included:
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Auditing and cleaning up legacy components
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Establishing scalable naming conventions and organizational logic
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Designing and documenting new patterns for data-heavy UIs
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Creating broker-specific elements like plan cards, quote summaries, and status indicators
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Collaborating with dev teams to ensure components were build-ready and flexible
This modernized system laid the foundation for a unified experience across all audiences and became a critical resource for future projects.​
Sample component from the updated design system
​WIREFRAMING
We translated our research findings into detailed wireframes, focusing on the most critical broker workflows. These included plan comparison, quote generation, application tracking, account management, notifications, communications, and more.
Even with a goal of simplification, the wireframes needed to address edge cases, error states, and layered interactions. We went through multiple rounds of review with stakeholders and development partners to ensure feasibility, accessibility, and clarity throughout.
This team required thorough, fully prototyped wireframes to support multiple critical goals:
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Validate user journeys, back-end requirements, and platform capabilities before committing development time.
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Identify and define interactions and components that could be built into a scalable, future-ready design system, rather than recreating or limiting ourselves to previously defined patterns.
We also used this work as a training ground to onboard the internal team into Figma, gradually acquainting them with the tool while supporting the migration of existing work and the creation of new components and interactions. This process included hands-on support, iteration, and guided collaboration. Over time, it led to the development of an extremely comprehensive and robust design system that not only met immediate needs, but positioned the team to work more efficiently and independently moving forward.
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Iteration & Collaboration
This wasn’t a one-and-done process. Every phase, from early wireframes to final UI, was shaped by ongoing feedback loops. Some features that were loosely defined at the start of the project continued to evolve throughout, requiring flexible thinking and adaptive planning.
Thanks to an agile process and continual review cycles, we were able to respond to changes on the fly, without losing momentum. This allowed us to remain on schedule and maintain alignment with development milestones, even as priorities shifted or definitions became clearer.
We held recurring checkpoints with product owners, compliance leads, and engineering teams to ensure the work was aligned with business goals and technically feasible. These reviews gave us consistent opportunities to refine interactions, resolve conflicts early, and build confidence across teams.
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ADDITIONAL TESTING
We also planned for user testing based on high-fidelity wireframes, allowing us to validate the new experience before final designs were locked in and handed off. This helped stakeholders see exactly how user needs were being addressed and provided a final layer of vetting before implementation.
As I transitioned off the project, the team had begun working with internal UX Research to conduct structured usability testing of the experience.​
Sample handoff element utilizing Figma's dev view
Handoff & Next Steps
Finalized designs are being delivered with full Figma documentation, including component specs, usage guidance, and contextual annotations. Development tickets are linked directly to relevant frames, and the design team continues to stay involved to support QA and implementation.
As the new broker portal and updated design system move toward launch, the internal team now has not only a modern foundation, but also the tools, training, and confidence to maintain and scale the system independently.
Future updates will continue to build on this work, extending the system’s reach across additional tools and audiences.