Consumer Strategy · Omni-Channel Experience · Enterprise Alignment

Defining the Consumer Experience Vision for Optum

Aligning leadership and teams around a shared vision, purpose, and design foundation for the consumer — bringing the omni-channel experience vision to life.

The Challenge

Historically, Optum operated with a strong B2B and B2B2C orientation, with limited emphasis on the end consumer. As one Optum leader put it: “We don’t have a consumer experience. What we have is a bunch of websites that consumers get to go to. We have a bunch of portals, but we don’t have an integrated experience. We need to move toward that.”

To shift the organization toward more human-centered thinking, I played a key leadership role in an enterprise-wide initiative to define Optum’s Consumer Experience Vision — a strategic foundation that would align teams, inspire design, and guide decision-making across the business.

The Approach

We partnered with our analytics team to develop a segmentation model, which we then used to conduct in-depth field research with real consumers. The insights fueled the development of rich, actionable personas — rooted in both qualitative and quantitative understanding — and designed to reflect the real needs, behaviors, and barriers of the people we serve.

To drive enterprise-wide alignment, we facilitated a series of executive workshops, which resulted in consensus around five key pillars:

A unified purpose
A set of guiding experience principles
Priority areas of focus
Defined consumer targets / personas
A high-level consumer journey that identified key touchpoints and experience objectives across the lifecycle

Once the vision was defined, my team created a suite of artifacts — including persona cards, experience vision booklets, and posters — that were used throughout the organization. These tools served as the anchor for downstream service design and product strategy work, ensuring consistency, empathy, and alignment at every level.

This work laid the foundation for more coordinated, consumer-centered experiences across Optum — and positioned experience strategy as a critical lever for enterprise transformation.

Vision Artifacts

The following pages from the Consumer Experience Vision document illustrate the five pillars of the framework — from unified purpose and guiding principles through to consumer targets and the journey map.

Vision Introduction page: 'Our Experience Today' — the current experience feels disjointed, without clear paths to follow. 'Next Generation Health Experience' — evolve to a One Optum approach, integrating strategies and laddering up to unified purpose and guiding principles. — Vision Introduction — framing the gap between today’s disjointed experience and the next-generation, integrated health experience Optum needed to build toward.

Unified Purpose page: 'Your trusted champion in achieving better well-being' — a guided, personalized, integrated, and constantly evolving health and wellness experience. — Unified Purpose — establishing the north star that would align teams and guide experience decisions across Optum.

Guiding Principles page showing three principles: Individual Hand-in-Hand Engagement, Empathetic and Intelligent Understanding, and Coordinated Expertise — each with supporting behaviors. — Guiding Principles — three pillars defining how Optum should show up for consumers: Individual Hand-in-Hand Engagement, Empathetic and Intelligent Understanding, and Coordinated Expertise.

Winning With Consumers page identifying four areas of focus: Be Human, Build Trust, See the Individual, and Be Holistic and Integrated — each with supporting consumer needs statements. — Four Priority Areas of Focus for Winning With Consumers: Be Human, Build Trust, See the Individual, and Be Holistic & Integrated — each grounded in what consumers need Optum to do.

Our Consumer Target page — focused on the chronic and complex patient population, representing 57% of the population and 92% of claims, with two illustrative personas: Victor (42, engaged) and Linda (52, unengaged). — Consumer Target — focusing strategy on the chronic and complex patient population (57% of population, 92% of claims), with two personas grounding the work in real human needs.

Consumer Journey map for the chronic and complex consumer — spanning Shop for and Purchase Benefits, Plan, Manage and Receive Care, Improve and Manage My Health, and Manage and Improve My Health Care Finances, with experience objectives at each touchpoint. — Consumer Journey Map for the chronic & complex consumer — identifying key touchpoints and experience objectives across four major journey phases.

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