Case study · B2B SaaS · Health & Benefits
Interactive personas
Foundational discovery for a next-generation benefits platform — turning fragmented personas into a shared picture of the consumer and admin experience teams could explore, not just read once in a deck.
TL;DR
- Problem
- Journey maps were dense, hard to find, and not visually engaging—so PMs, designers, engineers, and product marketing struggled to see the holistic user experience. People onboarding into the company could not visualize end-to-end flows. Personas were poorly understood and underutilized; stakeholders said they did not know how to use them.
- Role
- UX research lead — discovery across consumer and admin experiences; redesigned persona artifacts; led enablement sessions for product, tech, and GTM teams
- Team
- UX director; product management leads
- Timeline
- Discovery Oct–Dec 2025 · workshop Dec 2025
- Methods
- Consumer and HR admin interviews, HR admin survey, journey mapping, Figma prototyping, AI gem development, persona videos (Google Vids), stakeholder workshops
- Outcomes
- The interactive journey map, persona videos, and Gemini gems helped product leadership deliver an on-time discovery milestone and move into execution with shared user needs and priorities across personas—while replacing a third-party synthetic-users tool and saving ~$20k annually.
Background & challenge
Enablement gap
PMs, designers, engineers, and product marketing had journey maps and personas—but they were dense, hard to find, and not built for exploration. New hires couldn’t picture end-to-end consumer and admin flows; stakeholders said they didn’t know how to use the artifacts.
Business challenge
Leadership was betting on a next-generation benefits platform and needed end-to-end discovery across consumer and employer-admin journeys. Without a shared, evidence-backed picture, cross-functional teams risked optimizing specific workflows for specific personas instead of the whole experience.
My mandate
I ran discovery across consumer and admin experiences—consolidating 20+ intelligence sources, 12 consumer interviews, and 10 HR admin interviews—then redesigned how insights were consumed: a Figma interactive journey map, Google Vids persona videos, Gemini persona gems, and cross-functional enablement sessions.
What I built
Interactive journey map
Figma prototype with click-through consumer and employer-admin phases, pains, and screenshots—in one place for teams to explore.
Gemini AI personas
Consumer and employer-admin gems built through structured AI prompting—rehearsal partners for discovery, mockup critique, and messaging drills, not a substitute for live end-user research.
Persona intro videos
Short introductory videos produced in Google Vids, featuring quotes and highlight reels from user interviews so teams could hear the real voice of the customer.
Research process
Discovery moved from consolidating what we already knew, through paired consumer and employer-admin primary research, to interactive enablement assets product teams could reuse.
- 01
Discover & audit
Analytics, support themes, surveys, and SME interviews
- 02
Empirical research
Consumer IDIs (n=12) + HR admin interviews & survey (n=40); support transcript synthesis
- 03
Synthesize
Consumer and employer-admin personas and prioritized journeys
- 04
Scale insights
Figma journey prototype, Gemini gems, Google Vids persona videos
Consolidate intelligence
Goals
- Inventory existing research and telemetry so new studies would extend—not duplicate—what teams already knew
- Surface gaps between quantitative signals and qualitative insights across consumer and admin before commissioning more interviews
Methodology
- Audited analytics and employer engagement signals; analyzed ~290K account-services cases by topic
- Layered NPS, in-product survey signals, knowledge-base themes, and internal SME interviews
- Mapped existing persona artifacts into a single ecosystem view (FigJam)
Outcomes
- Surfaced where trust, search, and self-service were breaking down financially and emotionally
- Prioritized which journey phases needed primary research first
Primary research (consumer)
Goals
- Ground the three core consumer personas in lived experience—not assumptions
- Capture health priorities, benefits touchpoints, and honest product feedback
Methodology
- 12 in-depth interviews with consumers representing our three core personas (UserTesting panel)
- Synthesized 10 additional support call transcripts to stress-test themes from interviews and analytics
- Tagged themes in Dovetail and linked insights to consumer journey phases
Outcomes
- Pinpointed moments in the employee benefits journey where trust and confidence were eroding—giving teams concrete stories for the interactive map and intro videos
- Surfaced self-service, search, and enrollment friction on the employee path—complementing admin-side “help desk” burden
Primary research (employer admin)
Goals
- Quantify employer-admin time in benefits work
- Capture verbatim pain across enrollment, payroll sync, and carrier handoffs
Methodology
- 10 remote in-depth interviews with HR administrators (UserTesting panel)
- Survey of 40 HR admins (UserTesting) on weekly time in benefits tasks
- Synthesis in Dovetail with tagged JTBD and pain-point themes
Outcomes
- 57% of surveyed HR admins reported spending 11+ hours per week on benefits administration alone
- Ranked top frustrations: integration anxiety, “help desk” burden, chasing stragglers, manual audits
Enablement & AI experiments
Goals
- Make research consumable for PMs, designers, engineers, and product marketing
- Show how AI can accelerate internal empathy work without replacing end-user participants
Methodology
- Built a click-through interactive journey map in Figma—consumer and employer-admin tracks with micro-journeys (pain, opportunity, product screenshots)
- Produced short persona videos in Google Vids to give internal teams voice-of-customer texture alongside the map
- Developed Gemini gems through structured AI prompting for discovery support, concept critique, and messaging pressure-tests
- Ran a “know your customer” session at a cross-functional stakeholder workshop (Dec 2025)
Outcomes
- Product leadership used the interactive map and persona videos to close discovery on schedule and enter execution with shared priorities across personas
- Positioned Gemini gems as an amplifier for internal teams—not a substitute for live end-user research; contributed to retiring ~$20k/year synthetic-users spend
Impact
“Your focus on getting customer insights and working effectively with UXR ensures our teams are continuously anchored in customer needs. This work is critical for avoiding pitfalls like confirmation bias in interviews and helps us innovate meaningfully.”
“I’ve been so appreciative of the thoughtful work you’ve done to define and research all of our admin personas and jobs-to-be-done. Your efforts have been instrumental in the progress we’ve made so far in discovery and in shaping the path forward as we learn where to prioritize.”
Reflections
Personas fail when they’re static; pairing narrative video, micro-journeys, and interactive maps gave internal PMs and design something they could click through, not just read once.
AI personas are great for pressure-testing concepts and messaging and for catching obvious flaws early, but they are not a substitute for talking to real users.