TL;DR

AZOVA’s Simple Health Pass asked travelers to complete nine confusing steps across email, portal, and PDF uploads — people missed flights over paperwork. I led the UX overhaul that compressed the journey into three clear moments: connect your record, verify, travel. Details are altered to protect confidential health data.

• 9 steps reduced to 3

• -57% support tickets on verification

• Abandonment cut nearly in half during peak travel season

The Problem

Verification demand spiked overnight when travel programs launched, and the funnel leaked at every hand-off between systems. Users were stressed, time-boxed, and often first-time users of anything like this. Constraints: strict health-data compliance, integrations we couldn’t change, and a timeline measured in weeks, not quarters.

My Role

I was the sole designer, owning the funnel audit, flow redesign, UI, and plain-language content direction with a researcher. Engineering owned the lab integrations. I was personally responsible for the three-moment framing and for cutting two “nice to have” steps stakeholders initially wanted to keep.

Research & Insights

Session recordings and drop-off analytics located the failure points; interviews explained them. Insights: users couldn’t tell verification status at a glance, medical jargon triggered abandonment, and email hand-offs broke the sense of one continuous journey.

Exploration & Design Process

I compared a wizard that hid everything behind “next” against a status-dashboard model that showed the whole journey upfront. The wizard tested faster but users panicked when interrupted; the dashboard gave them a place to return to. The final design blends both: a persistent status view with guided steps inside it.

Validation & Testing

We tested with first-time travelers under a light time pressure to mirror reality. My assumption that reassurance copy should be brief was wrong — users wanted more explanation at the moment of upload, not less. We added contextual “why we need this” notes and completion confidence rose sharply.

Final Solution & Impact

The shipped three-step flow verified travelers for Hawaii programs and beyond. Verification-related support tickets fell 57%, abandonment nearly halved, and the calm, plain-language pattern set the tone for AZOVA’s wider product surface.

Reflection & Credits

Given more time I’d have built a proper service blueprint earlier — the biggest failures lived between systems, not inside screens. Thanks to the AZOVA engineering team and our researcher for moving at travel-season speed.