Healthtech
Healthtech
Robust Reports
Robust Reports
An AI-powered reporting-centred experience within Optum’s United Analytics Platform, designed to help analysts, executives and operators discover, build, collaborate and act on insights.
An AI-powered reporting-centred experience within Optum’s United Analytics Platform, designed to help analysts, executives and operators discover, build, collaborate and act on insights.
An AI-powered reporting-centred experience within Optum’s United Analytics Platform, designed to help analysts, executives and operators discover, build, collaborate and act on insights.
My role:
My role:
My role:
UX design and
research
UX design and
research
My engagement:
My engagement:
12
months
6 months
My engagement:
12
months
Build type:
Evolve+feature, web & tab
Client:
Optum
Build type:
Build type:
Evolution + new feature, web & tab
Client:
Client:
Optum/UHG
How it began
How it began
How it began
Optum’s teams were overwhelmed by scattered data, siloed tools and inconsistent reporting. Traditional BI dashboards were too slow, too technical and often failed to answer business questions fast. Users wasted time hunting for answers, struggling to piece together a full picture as metrics lived in too many places - Power BI, Tableau, Excel and email threads.
Getting to a useful insight involved:
Multiple platforms → Manual stitching → Rigid reports → specialist help →more manual work.
And once a report was created, there was another question: “Great. Now where did I put it?”
Optum’s teams were overwhelmed by scattered data, siloed tools and inconsistent reporting. Traditional BI dashboards were too slow, too technical and often failed to answer business questions fast. Users wasted time hunting for answers, struggling to piece together a full picture as metrics lived in too many places - Power BI, Tableau, Excel and email threads.
Getting to a useful insight involved:
Multiple platforms → Manual stitching → Rigid reports → specialist help →more manual work.
And once a report was created, there was another question: “Great. Now where did I put it?”
Optum’s teams were overwhelmed by scattered data, siloed tools and inconsistent reporting. Traditional BI dashboards were too slow, too technical and often failed to answer business questions fast. Users wasted time hunting for answers, struggling to piece together a full picture as metrics lived in too many places - Power BI, Tableau, Excel and email threads.
Getting to a useful insight involved:
Multiple platforms → Manual stitching → Rigid reports → specialist help →more manual work.
And once a report was created, there was another question: “Great. Now where did I put it?”
Solution - UAP (United Analytics Platform)
Solution - UAP (United Analytics Platform)
Ship consistent metrics, anywhere.
United Analytics Platform gives every user - executive, analyst or operator - a single place to explore, understand and act on metrics. It eliminates data silos and confusing dashboards by putting clarity, context and control at the centre of every metric.
Users no longer waste time searching, second-guessing or stitching together reports. With built-in definitions, ownership, and AI-powered agents, UAP transforms how teams align and make decisions.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
UAP was huge, my part was the center
UAP was huge, my part was the center
The United Analytics Platform had multiple features and work streams being designed in parallel. I owned key reporting experiences, particularly:
• Report library
• Report builder
• Reporting navigation
while collaborating with the wider team across: Metrics, Datasets, Collections, etc. I also led the research and conceptualisation of a feature called Lenses in the later stages of the project.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
Starting with how people approached reporting
Starting with how people approached reporting
Before I designed the reporting ecosystem, I watched people work with them. I spoke to managers, analysts and executives to understand what reporting actually looked like in their day-to-day work. My research included:
• 6 user surveys
• 6 contextual inquiries
• 3 focus groups x 5 participants
I heard repeatedly: “I spend more time stitching data from multiple platforms than analysing it.”
And I saw five recurring problems:
• Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
• Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
• Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
• Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
• Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
Navigation that held everything together
Navigation that held everything together
The existing structure was a patchwork — horizontal navigation bars and vertical sidebars coexisted across different sections, each following its own logic. Reports had one pattern, metrics another, portfolios a third. Browsing wasn't a task; it was a constant cognitive tax.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
Eve, an executive leader, wanted a fast, digestible overview: "a Wall Street Journal front page for metrics." Sam, a senior operations leader, needed to move quickly between reports to catch what was affecting performance. Anna, an analyst, wanted to pull up data on demand, without writing a query every time.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
Despite different goals, all three converged on the same complaint: too many clicks between them and the answer they needed.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
Navigation from structure-first to content first
Navigation from structure-first to content first
I prototyped several directions — a horizontal top nav, a hybrid model, even a "Your Content vs. Explore Content" split that mirrored how the backend organized ownership.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
After having internal discussions and user tests with both horizontal and vertical navigation approaches, we fixated on going with the vertical nav bar as it gels well with the kind of product UAP was growing to be. I further explored various kind of vertical navigations.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
The two levels in one made the most sense out of everything I explored since, it doesn't take up space and at the same time gives flexibility for the navigation to grow.
Now, I wanted to run my brain into the type of content we want to bring to focus, following which I tried two concepts and tested with the users, Your Content vs. Explore Content.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
Usability testing made the flaw in that last one obvious fast: users didn't think in terms of who owned something. They thought in terms of what it was.
That insight became the pivot. I moved to a single, content-first, left-hand navigation, organized around data type rather than ownership or hierarchy: Reports, Metrics, Datasets, Collections, Portfolios, Organisation Groups, and an integrated AI assistant.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
Why content-first held up?
Scalable — new content types could be added without restructuring the whole system
Consistent — one persistent sidebar meant users didn't have to relearn navigation inside every module
Efficient — multi-column flexibility let users see multiple levels of depth at once, which mattered in a data ecosystem this large
Responsive — panels could collapse progressively by screen size, keeping the experience usable across devices
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
Once navigation landed, it became the spine the rest of the platform aligned to — including how the Report Library, Report Builder and later Lenses were structured and named.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
When I asked a pool of 10 users, I saw five recurring problems:
Rigid reporting - Users couldn’t always shape reports around their business questions.
Data siloes - Relevant information lived across different platforms.
Manual work - Creating narratives and summaries took time.
Limited collaboration - Reports were often outputs rather than shared working spaces.
Poor discoverability - Finding, reusing and maintaining existing reports was another problem altogether.
Interested in knowing more? Contact me.
Interested in knowing more? Contact me.
Interested in knowing more? Contact me.
Got something exciting to build?
Your next project needs a multi-eyed, multi-disciplinary designer, who can turn complex systems into simple flows.
Got something exciting to build?
Your next project needs a multi-eyed, multi-disciplinary designer, who can turn complex systems into simple flows.
Got something exciting
to build?
Your next project needs a multi-eyed, multi-disciplinary designer, who can turn complex systems into simple flows.