Crafting SOGI (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity) questions for Included Health onboarding experience
Context
Communities is an Included Health service dedicated to raising care equity for an underserved population — the LGBTQ+ community. The service launched in summer 2022.
Objective
For context, only Included Health members who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community are eligible to use Communities. My team needed to design an onboarding flow that determined eligibility.
Stakeholders
UX Research, Product Management, Product Design, Engineering, GTM (Go To Market)
Timeline
3 months (January – March 2022)
Approach
We designed an onboarding flow that asked members very personal information (e.g. gender identity, sexual orientation, and pronouns).
To help me craft appropriate language, I partnered with a product manager who had extensive experience helping underserved populations in healthcare.
If the user selects Continue in the above screen, we continue to ask them four different demographic questions.
When crafting the above demographic questions, my priority as a UX writer was to come across as caring, transparent, and inclusive.
I also wanted to make sure that the explanations for “Why do we ask?” successfully communicated how this information would benefit the member and their healthcare experience. (See images below.)
Testing the onboarding experience
In partnership with the UX Research team, we launched a study to test the onboarding experience we designed. The following questions were top of mind as we conducted the study:
How do LGBTQ+ participants feel when moving through the onboarding flow?
Are we asking the right questions?
Do multiple choice answers feel inclusive?
Do we adequately explain how we will use this information to personalize care?
To test the experience, the designer and I created a prototype of the onboarding experience. We conducted 6 different interviews with participants that identified as LGBTQ+ and asked them to use the prototype in real-time.
Results
Participants felt validated by the experience. When participants were asked about how they would like to be addressed — such as pronoun preferences — they said they felt that this experience is truly built for them.
Participants felt the onboarding experience was clear and sensitive. The set-up process was very clear. Participants felt comfortable answering these questions because they were asked in a sensitive way and the options felt inclusive.
Participants felt the Glossary of Gender Terms was sensitive and educational. Participants appreciated that Included Health included educational language about common gender terms.
Quotes from participants:
“I think it’s pretty unique that you guys are asking for my chosen name upfront and actually using it right away. It’s giving me a pretty solid feeling about this app.”
“The whole point of Included Health is that it is personalized. I wouldn’t give this information to Spotify.”
“I think you guys did a good job at including a lot of options for identity.”