MD THINK
I was the Lead Product Designer for Maryland’s Total Human-services Integrated NetworK — MD THINK. A new data-management cloud-based platform that provides critical resources to adolescents, adults, refugees, and those requiring long-term care.
About 1/3 of Marylands residents require state social service assistance.
Maryland’s Department of Human Services was struggling to keep up with their demand for providing critical services to their most vulnerable people due to their extremely outdated, costly, and inefficient data systems.
MD THINK — is the first integrated cloud-based social service platform that allows multiple State agencies to share and manage data to better deliver benefits to individuals who needed it most.
I was brought on towards the middle of the project as a Lead UX Designer consultant for Deloitte and was immediately thrown into an already built system that required a lot of rework without much guidance. In order to get a first hand perspective of how the outdated system worked, my team set up a 3 month discovery phase.
12-week onsite employee workshops
users overview —
Caseworkers
Create Intake Assessments and collect necessary data to provide services for individuals in need.
Referral Worker
Evaluates provider applications and conducts walk-through reviews of Program & Services.
Supervisor
Assigns intake assessments to caseworkers and oversee approval of cases.
Management
Assigns referral workers to provider applications and oversee's approval.
“We work in siloed systems so it’s difficult to see when other teams have completed tasks”
- DHS employee
“I spend more time re-entering peoples information into the system only to discover they’ve already been integrated.”
- Caseworker
“By the time I get back to the office after an on-site walk through I’ve already forgotten important details that need to be entered into our system.”
-Referral worker
“I have to sift through old emails just to find important documentation for Service Providers because there is no central hub”
- OLM worker
Custom Employee Dashboards
Improve cross-program collaboration and make tracking, sharing and completing work tasks easier.
New Features
New Person Search Feature
New Find and Add cross-platform functionality cuts down on unnecessary manual work and prevents duplicate entries from clouding up the database.
New Features
Modernizing On-Site Visits
Referral workers can now remotely access and upload important client information while on the field without having to run the risk of breeching security by utilizing their personal phones.
New Service Provider Dashboard
Service providers now have their own hub to manage all their records, eliminating the stress of email documentation.
New Features
Overall Results
The platform went live in January of 2020, right before the world shut down. Thankfully, thousands of Maryland's DHS workers were able to securely and remotely access and enter important data. This significantly impacted how citizens were able to receive services throughout the entire pandemic.
By transforming the way Maryland delivers health and human services, MD THINK is improving the lives of approximately two million Marylanders, and Long-Term Care program’s electronic application has already spiked to 89 percent – reducing manual processing and increasing efficiency for faster eligibility determination.
Responsibilities
UX / UI
Product Strategy
Prototyping
System Design
Uster Testing
Project Management
Launch
January 2020
Team
Deloitte’s Development & Business Analyst team