Cutting a Statewide Benefits Application From Weeks to 9 Minutes
My Role: Lead Product Designer
"I love the fact that I can come here to do my verification. The process was rather simple and quick."
This enrollment flow was designed for a statewide utility-discount assistance program, using an AI-assisted verification process that cut average application completion time down to 9 minutes and helped qualify roughly 50% of eligible households for relief amid a 13% rate increase.
My Contribution
Product Strategy
User Research
Product Design
The Team
1 x Product Manager
1 x Product Designer
4 x Engineers
Year
2025
Context & Problem
That gap between the program's operational complexity and what an applicant actually experiences was the real design problem. Before this platform, applying meant navigating an entirely manual, paperwork-heavy process — one where a missing pay-stub or an unclear form field could stall someone's application for weeks. The challenge wasn't just "process tens of thousands of applications at statewide scale" — it was making sure that scale and six-utility complexity never became the applicant's problem to solve.
Research & Insights
The core insight that shaped the solution: the bottleneck wasn't applicant willingness, it was review cycles — incomplete income documentation (like a missing pay-stub window) meant applications stalled waiting on back-and-forth, not because people didn't want to apply. That reframed the design problem from "make the form easier to fill out" to "catch and resolve documentation gaps before submission."
Design Process & Key Decisions
Three design decisions made the platform work at statewide volume:
A short, plain-language application with a document coach. Applicants complete the application online in minutes; the document coach flags missing pay-stub windows or incomplete income fields before submission, eliminating the review-and-resubmit cycles that normally stall benefit applications.
An AI eligibility agent built into the product. With the agent the application details are automatically reviewed, giving users real-time feedback on their supporting documentation and household information.
A single front door routing to six utility-specific rule sets. One application experience for the applicant, regardless of which utility and income tier ultimately determines their eligibility — the complexity of six different rule sets stayed on the backend, not in what the applicant had to navigate.
The Outcome
For applicants:
9 minutes average time to complete the application — down from a multi-week, back-and-forth manual process
4.5/5 consistent applicant satisfaction rating
~50% of eligible households qualified for the program through this flow
For stakeholders:
60,000+ applications processed to a final determination in the first eight months (39K approvals and 52K processed in H1 alone)
~70% of case volume now decided by the AI eligibility agent, directly inside the product
~50% reduction in weekly operational support hours (120–150 hours/week down to 50–60) through automation