Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA) has a long history as a catalyst for innovation. For example, their study, Roadmap to Coverage, was highly influential in the passage of the Massachusetts health insurance reform bill popularly known as RomneyCare (which was later the basis for ObamaCare). As a chartered public charity, BCBSMA views their responsibility to their members to include acting as an agent of positive change within the larger health care system.
“Cantina took the concept of prototyping to a whole new level when they created a full-scale model of our new space. This allowed us to engage senior leadership in a meaningful ‘show don’t tell’ conversation which dramatically changed the course of the design in favor of a more positive consumer experience.”
The Challenge
The U.S. healthcare system is both remarkable and challenging. Remarkable because it consistently creates medical and technological breakthroughs. Challenging because consumers are confronted with an increasingly complex, costly, and difficult system to navigate.
We partnered with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts to create an innovative new in-person experience that would bridge the gap between consumers and the larger healthcare system, one dedicated to putting co-creation and human-centered innovation into action.
By connecting the dots between the brand, physical space, and service design with the unmet healthcare needs of consumers, we were able to deliver a holistic experience that brought our client’s vision of engaging consumers in meaningful conversations and co-creation to life.
We worked together with the client to conduct field research to better understand consumer healthcare needs and challenges.
Human-centered Research & Insights
Human-centered research is a powerful way to understand people’s perceptions, expectations, and beliefs, and to surface their unmet needs and desires. Through observational, contextual, and experiential research, we learned that consumer engagement with the new experience faced several barriers, from distrust of health insurers to confusion around what healthcare innovation is and who it is for.
As a result, there was a fundamental disconnect between the initial direction of the brand, spatial design, and story of the experience envisioned by the client and what consumers really needed and expected. Each of these elements would need to be reconsidered to set a new creative direction for the experience that was in alignment with consumer expectations and needs.
Our research uncovered opportunities to engage and inspire consumers in meaningful ways through their experiences with staff. To realize this opportunity, new approaches to hiring, planning, metrics, and governance would be needed.
Lastly, on a strategic level, we learned that the experience needed to be clearly associated with our client’s parent brand. This would not only help to overcome consumer distrust and confusion, it would also move the client’s innovation function closer to the day-to-day business and consumers themselves. One of the biggest risks with innovation is that it’s perceived as someone else’s job or is disconnected from the core business and what the consumer really needs. The experience needed to signal that engaging consumers in co-creation or conversations about health and healthcare innovation was at the heart of the client’s larger mission.
Participatory design with consumers allowed us to bring to the surface unmet needs and desires by having people make objects and tell stories about what they mean and why they matter. Designing with—not just for—consumers was a critical ingredient for designing a successful experience.
The Approach
We used insights research and storytelling to align the client's executives around a new creative and experiential direction. But what became clear early on was that research alone wouldn't be sufficient. The experience we were being asked to design touched nearly every function of the organization, from brand and physical space to staffing models, governance, and how success would be measured.
Working closely with the client, key stakeholders, the brand agency, and the architecture firm, we changed the name, identity system, and interior design of the space; and just as importantly, we changed the strategic narrative to reflect what consumers actually needed. Research had told us that trust was the central issue: consumers were skeptical of a health insurer running an “innovation experience.” The brand needed to come closer to the parent company, not further from it.
To drive the design of the consumer experience, we created future-state journey maps that visualized how to entice, engage, and re-engage visitors across multiple visits. Service blueprints documented what would need to happen backstage—which teams would be involved, when, and how—to make those frontstage moments possible. These weren't just aspirational documents, they were operational guides that specified staffing responsibilities, handoffs, and the conditions under which the experience would actually hold together.
The full-scale prototype of the space was made out of foam core in three days. It helped to streamline decisions and optimize the design of the space. It also allowed the client’s staff to rehearse and refine the service experience prior to opening.
We “bodystormed” (like brainstorming, but based on playacting) the service design with the client to rapidly move from idea to mature service design with the client’s staff. The full-scale prototype of the space proved invaluable for this exercise and helped to accelerate design decisions.
A full-scale prototype of the space proved especially powerful. Over three days, we built a 1:1 model using foam core, every layout decision, visual interaction, and verbal exchange prototyped before construction was complete. We invited the client's executives into the mock space, which transformed abstract design decisions into something they could experience directly. It dramatically accelerated alignment and, in the words of the Director of Innovation, "changed the course of the design in favor of a more positive consumer experience."
But prototype success and launch success are different things. Governance was the bridge between them. We developed a comprehensive curatorial plan, a revised staffing model, a staff training program, and a decision-support tool. In all, this comprised the operational infrastructure the client would need to sustain a great experience beyond opening day, and to measure whether it was working.
A client staff team member talks with a consumer about the latest innovations in prosthetics.
Engaging Consumers in Healthcare Innovation
The new experience launched with Bespoke Bodies, an exhibit on innovative prosthetics by Design Museum Boston. It gave the team an immediate opportunity to assess and refine the experience in real conditions.
The follow-on exhibit, Hospital in the Home, an emerging model for delivering clinical care in patients' residences delivered a fivefold increase in visitors. More than a thousand co-creative conversations with consumers yielded direct insight into what people wanted from healthcare innovation and what they still didn't trust about the system.
That level of engagement was exactly what the client had set out to achieve. And it was possible because the design of the experience extended beyond what visitors saw and felt into how the organization was structured, measured, and equipped to show up for them.
Frontstage Impact
Fivefold increase in visitor traffic
1,000+ consumer co-creation conversations
Redesigned brand identity, spatial experience, and visitor journey
Backstage Impact
Revised staffing model
Staff training program
Governance & curatorial plan • Decision-support tool
Role
Strategist
Researcher
Service Designer
Key Deliverables
Insights & Recommendations
Customer Journeys
Service Blueprint
Full-Scale Service Prototype
Print & Digital Design
Revised staffing model
Staff training program
Governance & curatorial plan
Decision-support tool