The State of New Mexico:
Creating a Unified Web Experience for State Benefits

Client

State of New Mexico

Team

Designers x5
Business Analysts x5
Developers x10
Client Skakeholders x4

Role

UX Design Consultant

Time Frame

1 year

Challenge

This is the first sprint of a multi-year effort to improve New Mexico’s state benefits system. Previously, health services were scattered across multiple outdated websites, each with cluttered layouts, inconsistent branding, and dense blocks of information.

This disjointed experience made it difficult for residents to find and understand critical health resources, leaving them frustrated and overwhelmed.

Solution

The State of New Mexico partnered with Accenture to streamline branding and transform the user experience across their health services websites.

By unifying fragmented sites into one platform, we established a consistent visual identity and an intuitive, information-first design. This ensured residents could easily find, understand, and act on critical health information, making it simpler to discover and qualify for services.

Impact

Our design solution proved successful through notable improvements in key metrics.

83%

Task Completion Rate.

74%

Rated easy to navigate.

43%

Reduction in time on task.

My Design Process

Discovery & Research

  • Heuristic Evaluation to assess current site's usability/accessibility.
  • Site Structure analysis to understand page hierachy.  
  • Market Research

Define & Strategize

  • Information Architecture to define a new site strcutre and user flow
  • Wireframing to visualize content placement and page structure.
  • Content Strategy

Design & Test

  • Built Modular Design System to ensure consistencuy and scalability.
  • Task-based usability testing to assess effectiveness of new structure.

Deliver & Handoff

  • Design System Documentation
  • Sprint-based Design QA & Iterative Reviews to maintain design integrity, usability and accessability.
How might we create a unified, user-friendly web experience for New Mexico residents to easily access and understand critical health information, reducing frustration and improving accessibility across all health services platforms?

Discovery & Research

To better understand the State of New Mexico’s background, I dove into research by conducting a heuristic evaluation and analyzing market competitors with the following objectives in mind:
  • Assess the current website experience to understand how well it serves users and meets accessibility standards.
  • Identify key pain points users face when navigating state services and information.
  • Evaluate competitor websites to uncover best practices and areas where New Mexico’s site can improve.

Identifying usability gaps through heuristic evaluation & site structure analysis

As part of the heuristic evaluation, I conducted a click-through walkthrough of the website, acting as a first-time user. This revealed key usability challenges - content overload, scattered information, and too many links, making it hard to find a clear focal point.

To address these issues, I analyzed the site’s hierarchy, mapped out the page structure, and identified patterns that were inconsistently used across pages, highlighting areas for improvement.

Site Hierarchy

Content Patterns

Learning from government health sites to optimize architecture

I then conducted market research to better understand the common site architecture structures used by other government health benefit websites, identifying design approaches that enhance user experience and streamline navigation compared to others.
Some of the key takeaways that influenced the SoNM redesign included:
  • A clearly defined page hierarchy.
  • Intuitive navigation for better usability.
  • Reducing clutter through standardized components and templates.

Define & Strategize

How the site map shapes content and navigation

Taking the research into account, I drafted a sitemap to help the team visualize the new site’s information architecture and understand how users would funnel through the platform to find information that met their needs.

Wireframing & defining page structure

I then started wireframing and brainstorming how to bring the new pages and architecture to life. This involved deciding what content would go on each page and how the design structure would evolve as users moved deeper into the site. The goal was to keep the content specific and relevant while maintaining a clear and consistent layout throughout the site.

Design & Test

Building a scalable and flexible modular design system

Given the dynamic nature of the SoNM web experience, I built on our team’s building blocks strategy to create a flexible, reusable system. This approach ensured consistency across the site, allowing users to consume information in a familiar format. By analyzing content needs and user flows, I defined the key modular blocks that structured the new web experience, making it scalable and adaptable as the platform evolved.

Individual Blocks

Individual components designed with a standardized structure, ensuring consistency, flexibility, and seamless integration across the site.

Applying Building Blocks

Modular blocks are dynamic and can be reused across different pages based on content needs.

Testing for clarity & ease of navigation

To validate the effectiveness of the redesigned portal, I, along with my colleague, conducted user testing with 24 New Mexico residents familiar with searching for state benefits. Our goal was to assess how easily users could navigate the new structure and locate key information.
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Participants were asked to complete a series of scenario-based and expectation-based task questions. For example:
  • You need assistance paying your electricity bill. Walk me through how you would find relevant benefits and check your eligibility.
  • You’re looking for housing support but aren’t sure what’s available. How would you start your search?
  • If you clicked this button, what would you expect to happen next?

83%

Success in Task Completion Rate.
Users were able to effectively complete tasks and locate information about state benefits, confirming that the new information architecture made navigating and skimming content more intuitive.

Deliver & Handoff

Bridging design and development with the building blocks library

The Building Blocks Library wasn’t just a design tool - it was also a bridge to development. I created a centralized reference that documented each component’s usage, margins, and interaction behaviors that woudl essentially be the single source of truth for both designers and developers. This made the handoff process seamless, as developers could easily reference the library to build and implement pages.

Ensuring design integrity through development

Once development began on the new web portal, I took the lead in a new phase of design management. To ensure accuracy and alignment with our approved designs, I worked closely with the business analyst and development team to quality-check each sprint.

For every page built, I, along with two other designers, led the initiative to review margins, content accuracy, component implementation, interaction behaviors, and overall visual consistency. Through ongoing collaboration, we ensured that the final product faithfully reflected the approved designs while maintaining usability and accessibility standards.

Bringing It All Together!

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Level 4

Level 5

Achieving 83% Task Completion: A Unified Portal that Delivers Results

Before the unified portal, New Mexico residents had to navigate through multiple platforms, each with its own inconsistent design and confusing user journeys. Finding the right state benefits was often a frustrating and time-consuming experience.

Our new portal changed that by focusing on making the process as simple and user-friendly as possible, especially during a stressful time for users. The redesign brough significant impact as listed below:

83%

Task Completion Rate in usability tests.

74%

Of users rated the portal as easy to navigate (using the Likert Scale)

43%

Reduction in time on task in usability tasks.  

Other Projects:

State of New Mexico: 
Redesigning Application Process & Benefits Tracking for Applicants
SoCal Gas:
Replaced Manual Emergency Systems with AI-Powered Response Platforms