NYSOH - COVID Alert Signup

UI/UX, Web Design

GDIT/NYSOH

2021 - 2022

Website

3 Designers:

• 1 Lead
• 2 Seniors (inc. me)

1 user researcher/strategist

3 project managers

Various developers

Misc. lawyers, government emissaries, and insurance marketplace representatives

Given that the world was in the thick of grappling with COVID-19, the state health department needed an emergency response alert system to update citizens about case number spikes that were ongoing throughout the state before the vaccine rollout kicked off later in 2021.

Before we even began trying to sketch this within the design language(s) of the existing NYSOH programs, pre-planning considerations and requirements for the sign up system were:

• Research similar text message alert systems utilized by other state governments and see what similarities/best practices we could carry over into our design
• If GDIT’s chosen text message platform (Twilio) would play nice with existing NYSOH back-end and comms
• Design fields, forms, and flow to fit within NYSOH’s existing sign up layouts as well as layouts for existing accounts across the various NYSOH software platforms

We started off right away designing in lower fidelity iterations by pulling elements from existing older NYSOH projects, which enabled us to get our proposals in front of DOH much faster. As we were working early on, the federal government began the vaccine rollout, so inter-department discussions between GDIT/NYSOH/DOH began morphing the project’s capacities to account for an endgame that:

• Anticipated larger numbers of New York citizens getting vaccinated against COVID-19
• Branding, promotion, and sign up instructions must accommodate other far-reaching public health concerns (of which to be outlined and overseen by DOH)

So the aperture of our design approach expanded to include:

• Adjusting required fields and forms for sign up/consent based on inter-department discussions
• Adjusting copywriting and sign up/consent instructions to accommodate the larger reach of the alert system
• Continue working in NYSOH design language with these new goals in mind

The emergency update signup processes were successfully integrated into every system under the NYSOH and DOH banners. What initially started as a COVID-specific project went through numerous managerial and structural revisions to become a much broader and far-reaching public health notification system that over 70% of new signees and existing customers opted into on rollout.

The revisions and inter-department discussions also moved extremely fast, which cannot usually be said about government design projects. So if you got your health coverage through the New York state government, or if you’re in Syracuse and get a text about an incoming swarm of Canadian locusts...you’re welcome.