Health Insurance Confusion: Usability 101

It's open enrollment with my insurance provider this month, and as I wade through documentation sections regarding healthcare topics, I'm struck by a simple change that would make this much easier.

Not that they haven't tried to make it easy. I have print material, online web pages, PDFs, and almost a dozen flash videos with voice, chapters, etc. Each is professionally produced.

And each makes the same one, simple mistake.

For any healthcare topic, there will be a section explaining what it means (such as "Annual Deductible"). And then, there are subsections for each policy. There are dozens of policies, so the bulk of space taken up (of print, video, or voice content) regards the 11 policies that don't pertain to me.

Worse, for every topic, I need to wade through these similarly-named policies and re-discover which one is mine. (High Deductible PPO Standard Plan vs. Health Net High Deductible PPO Standard plan, for example.) Actually, my plan name isn't even mentioned in several of these, and I have no idea why.

Obviously, a website would fail if it didn't clarify after login what content is relevant to the user. Imagine, post login, presenting everything as a PDF, where 90% of what's in the PDF is not actually available to the user. Well, if you are going to mail something to me you know who I am, so isn't that basically like I've logged in?

Such a pity, too. Really nice Flash video production, and so thoughtlessly designed.

Photo Diving Insanity (it's a good thing)

Anyone who enjoyed the PhotoSynth demo will like this.

The HardRock Cafe's website has utilized some flavor of it via the emerging SilverLight technologies from Microsoft. (Fyi - the FireFox plugin for Slverlight on the Mac worked flawlessly for me.) This is way cool.

Try it:

- On the HardRock Cafe Memorabilia page...

- Go to "Beetles" (left nav)

- Look for the letters - a picture letters that were mailed

- Go to the envelope

- Look at the stamp

...no, really LOOK at the stamp.

(No, it's not a real stamp.)

Is it just me, or does this smell like Paul Allen?