Sunlife Direct Case Study

Sun Life Financial was awarded the Canadian Dental Care Plan (CDCP), an initiative supporting over 3 million Canadians in accessing dental care.

To support this rollout, we redesigned the provider platform—enabling healthcare professionals to efficiently manage enrolment, claims, eligibility checks, and program updates.

Key self-serve features included:

  • Coverage look-up
  • CDCP registration
  • Claim submission tool
  • Lumino Health
  • Menu (Navigation)

CLIENT
Sunlife

ROLE
As Senior Lead UX Designer:

  • Led end-to-end UX strategy and execution
  • Aligned business, product, and engineering teams
  • Defined UX architecture across key features
  • Conducted usability testing and validation
  • Ensured AAA accessibility and responsive design compliance

The Challenge

We were tasked with redesigning an existing, complex platform under strict constraints:

  • No new backend service calls could be introduced
  • Legacy architecture had to remain intact
  • The experience needed to be:
    • Fully responsive
    • AAA accessible
    • Scalable for CDCP and future programs

The challenge was to deliver a modern, intuitive experience without changing the underlying system.

Approach

1. Reframing the Information Architecture

We began with a full audit of the platform:

  • Conducted a complete inventory of existing pages
  • Identified structural inconsistencies and navigation friction

To validate user mental models, we facilitated a card sorting exercise with:

  • Healthcare administrators
  • Active platform users

Outcome:

  • Revealed how users naturally grouped tasks and information
  • Highlighted misalignment between system structure and user expectations

2. Synthesizing Insights

We translated research into actionable structure:

  • Clustered results using color-coded groupings
  • Identified emerging patterns across workflows
  • Defined clearer navigation hierarchies and content groupings

This enabled a shift from a system-driven IA → user-centered IA

Previous state
New state

Redesigning Core Experiences (Coverage Lookup)

Problem

Analytics showed the coverage lookup tool was one of the most critical features.

However, the existing experience:

  • Required navigating to a separate results page
  • Used collapsible drawers for each result
  • Forced users to open multiple items to find key details

This created:

  • High interaction cost
  • Slower task completion
  • Friction in high-frequency workflows

Design Strategy

We focused on:

  • Reducing steps to access key information
  • Improving scanability and data visibility
  • Designing for scalability across programs

Key changes:

  • Consolidated results into a more accessible, single-view format
  • Reduced reliance on hidden interactions (e.g., drawers)
  • Prioritized frequently accessed data points upfront

Solution

The redesigned experience delivered:

  • A streamlined navigation structure aligned with user mental models
  • A mobile-first, responsive interface
  • AAA accessibility compliance across the platform
  • A scalable foundation supporting both CDCP and future services

Key Takeaways

  • Designing within constraints requires system-aware creativity, not just ideal solutions
  • Information architecture is the backbone of complex platforms
  • Small interaction changes (like reducing clicks) can drive significant usability gains
  • Scalability should be designed early—even when systems can’t yet support it fully

Impact

  • Reduced friction in high-frequency tasks like coverage lookup
  • Improved efficiency for healthcare providers managing patient workflows
  • Established a future-ready UX foundation within legacy constraint