about me
I thrive in environments with complexity and ambiguity; I have an innate desire to understand the industries I'm working within to identify opportunities to redesign systems to work for all: especially underrepresented folks and folks from historically underinvested communities. A few examples from my career include:
visiting small community-based lenders and CDFIs who support first-time homebuyers with culturally-informed support throughout the homeownership journey;
including and prioritizing federally qualified health centers, who are required to care for anyone and everyone, in product research and design efforts;
advocating for better support of social determinants of health data and community health work programs;
and helping bring in providers and healthcare leaders from minority and underinvested communities to ERG-sponsored events.
My current role is a UX generalist role. I work across the double diamond, leading everything from foundational discovery research to definition of IA to delivery of detailed interaction design. I currently work at athenahealth, where I'm applying my experience in design research, service design, and interaction design to our care management experiences.
I’m interested in developing my trauma-informed research and equity-centered community design skills, as well as mentoring junior designers and exploring people leadership.
When I'm not on Microsoft Teams sending chats and GIFs, you can find me playing with my dog Max, talking about the intersections of identity/politics/religion, or ducking into yet another coffeeshop or bookstore (or combination of the two).
Note, I cannot share some project details here for confidentiality reasons, but please feel free to contact me for more information.
projects
Care Gaps (athenaPayer)
In value-based care models, healthcare payers (insurance companies, Medicare, and Medicaid) reimburse practices differently based on many factors including care gap closure (quality performance) and patient risk (evaluated primarily by population demographics and disease burden today). Payers may also have more holistic data about a patient’s healthcare journey and utilization based on insurance claims. If payer data is seamlessly integrated into clinician workflows, providers and their staff can use data from payers to:
Provide patients with the care they need, per established clinical best practices
Focus their resources on the patients who need the most care
Manage and coordinate patient care between members of a care team
Get appropriately reimbursed for the care they provide while minimizing administrative burden and data overload
This line of business is a key part of athenahealth’s shift to better support value-based care. I led product design, research, and strategy for the two scrum teams building the clinician-facing workflows for this initiative. The company received a KLAS Points of Light Award in 2022 for this work. Reach out to me for the password to the case study below.
Chronic Care Management Services
In 2022, athenahealth launched a new service offering: our nurses and patient engagement specialists provide chronic care management (CCM) services directly to patients as an extension of our provider clients. UX partnered closely with the CCM Services team to bring our experience strategy expertise to a new operations team, as well as advocate on their behalf for, and contribute to, R&D investments that would unblock them from reaching their 2023 goals. Reach out to me for the password to the case study below.
Manufactured Housing
Manufactured housing is a key part of Fannie Mae's affordable housing strategy. The Design Strategy team built a partnership with the Single-Family Affordable Housing team, where we developed a foundational understanding of the manufactured housing industry and evaluated Fannie Mae’s existing financial products in the space for additional opportunities. Below, find two case studies of my team’s work.
Manufactured Home Buying Process: discovery research, process mapping, stakeholder mapping >
Homebuyer Education
Fannie Mae sees quality homebuyer education (HBE) as crucial for sustainable homeownership. With our Single-Family Affordable partners, we researched the current process of providing HBE and evaluated five competitive HBE courses in order to improve borrower and lender experience alike. Below, find case studies on two of our projects in the Homebuyer Education space.
Homebuyer Education Lender Research: discovery research and prototype testing >
Homebuyer Education Competitive Product Analysis: heuristic evaluation >
Design Education
Our design team launched the Design Thinking Academy to spread and enable design thinking across the enterprise. We used our human-centered design methods to better understand participants’ motivations and experiences so we could identify opportunities and provide recommendations for improvement.
Design Thinking Learning Experience: discovery research, journey mapping, service blueprinting >
get in touch
I’m currently employed at athenahealth, where I'm applying my experience in design research, service design, and interaction design to the organization’s vision: to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all.
When I'm not in the office using up our supply of sticky notes or sending snarky GIFs on Teams, you can find me playing with my dog Max, talking about the intersections of race/politics/faith, or ducking into yet another coffeeshop or bookstore (or combination of the two).
If you’d like to chat about any of the above, please get in touch with me at huang.allison24@gmail.com or message me on LinkedIn.