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CMS (CENTER FOR MEDICARE & MEDICAID SERVICES) • 2021-2023 • PORTAL DESIGN
MY ROLE
Lead UX Designer
CHANNELS
Web • Mobile
PLATFORM
ServiceNow
ENGAGEMENT
Jan 2021 - Feb 2023 • 2+ years
CONTEXT
A federal agency, a pandemic, and a portal nobody was using
When the world went into pandemic shutdown in 2020, CMS — the agency administering Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA for 170M+ Americans — had to run entirely remotely overnight. Their existing employee portal had only 13% adoption. Employees couldn't find information, access tools, or collaborate.
CMS saw a demo of what ServiceNow had built for their own employees and wanted something similar. ServiceNow referred them to Intellective. I joined as Lead UX Designer in January 2021.
Before
USER RESEARCH
Validating Design Through User Research
Research was a core part of the design process for CMS Connect. Regular usability studies with CMS employees helped validate design decisions, prioritize improvements, and ensure the product aligned with real-world user needs and workflows. Here's an example for Navigation testing
Some key findings and design decisions
Finding
Design Decision
Users strongly preferred the simpler two-column navigation. Fewer choices meant less cognitive load and more confidence when navigating.
Adopted the two-column layout as the primary navigation structure. Also removed the "Quick Links" column from "Request A Service" which users couldn't identify.
Participants couldn't identify Codi as a virtual chat agent — several believed it connected them to a live human, creating false expectations.
Relabeled to "Chat with the Virtual Agent, Codi" — setting accurate expectations before engagement. Clear labeling reduced abandonment at the chat entry point.
Confusion over what View All Services does. Some could correctly guess what it does, but weren’t confident that is what it did. Another user pointed thought it would provide descriptions to links already in the menu.
Change the labelling to something more meaningful to what the section asks/does for a user.
WHAT I DESIGNED
CMS Connect — a unified employee experience platform
CMS Connect gave every employee a single, personalized destination for everything they needed: announcements, requests, knowledge, tools, and tasks — surfaced based on their role and what was relevant that day.
MOBILE EXPERIENCE
CMS Now Mobile — extending the portal to iOS and Android
I designed the native mobile experience for CMS Connect — enhancing ServiceNow's Now Mobile platform with CMS-specific branding, new content surfaces, and features that made the app genuinely useful on the go, not just a scaled-down version of the portal.
THE OUTCOME
From 13% to 84% adoption in 2 months
The previous portal — built over 2+ years — had 13% adoption. CMS Connect reached 84% within 2 months of launch. The difference wasn't technology — it was information architecture, personalization, and genuine usability.
84%
Portal adoption
Within 2 months of launch — up from 13% on the old site
10 wks
Contract to delivery
First iteration in 10 weeks — vs 2+ years for previous vendor
2+ yrs
Ongoing engagement
IT portal grew into full enterprise employee lifecycle platform
REFLECTION
What designing for the federal government taught me
Designing for accessibility
508 compliance wasn't a constraint — it was a forcing function. Designing for screen readers, keyboard navigation, and color contrast from the start produced cleaner hierarchy and more deliberate layouts than if accessibility had been an afterthought.
IT portals aren't just for IT
The initial brief was an IT service portal. By the end of the engagement it had grown to cover HR, onboarding, knowledge, mobile, microsites, and AI-powered search. That evolution taught me to design with expansion in mind from day one — every component, every pattern, every navigation decision was a bet on where the product might go next.
Consistency
The most challenging part of a 2+ year engagement isn't the early design work — it's maintaining consistency as the product grows. Making sure the 10th feature feels like it belongs alongside the first one requires discipline, a strong component system, and the willingness to push back when shortcuts are tempting.