Veterans Affairs 2020

The Question

How can we improve the digital experience Veterans have with the VA? Should the VA build a mobile app?

The Story

The VA provides benefits to over 9 million Veterans, runs the largest healthcare system in America, and has a history of innovation (e.g. pioneering electronic medical records). And despite significant recent website improvements, the VA wants to continually improve its digital experience for Veterans, including for the 40% of Veterans who access the VA website from mobile devices. The VA already has dozens of niche apps, each for a single purpose, but they challenged us to research and test the value of a multi-functional mobile app.

In figuring out how to make the VA more accessible for its digital users, we had to confront many questions. What is the digital experience of Veterans? Would a native mobile app make sense? What would the app look like and how would it work?

Questions like these guided our research as we conducted interviews with 35 Veterans who use the VA website to figure out how we can meet their individual needs. We then created a higher fidelity prototype of a multi-functional mobile app, including the digital services Veterans value most. Through interviews, surveys, and user-testing, we gathered input from over 100 Veterans to inform our prototype and recommendations.