The setting
connects patients, outpatient mental health providers, and health insurers. gives health plans a network of credentialed clinicians who give outpatient mental health care, plus referral links and ways to measure how the network performs.
The payer handoff promises clarity that the therapist search does not preserve.
The co-branded entry protects payer context, while the search experience protects a reusable provider-selection flow.
Who you’d be doing this for
“I picked someone who looked right, then I couldn't tell if my plan still applied.”
Ragnar Korhonen · Health Plan Member · a character in this brief
She entered therapist search from her health plan's provider directory and is trying to use in-network coverage.
What is at stake
Payer-directory members complete provider selection at 38%. You must decide how much payer context belongs inside the shared therapist search flow.
Why it isn’t already fixed
Every obvious fix costs something else. That’s the part you’d have to decide.
- payer-specific clarity vs shared search consistency
- selection completion vs coverage accuracy
- fast experiment vs durable interaction pattern
Why Headway
Payer-directory referrals depend on a credible path from health-plan context to an in-network therapist.
Written with these in mind
Not your kind of problem? 104 more at Headway, or browse every organization.
Where the organization context comes fromThe postings this brief was written from, and the reporting read before it.
The organization context comes from public information. The situation and characters are written for the brief.
Job postings it was written from
Public descriptions of the work at Headway. They are listed as sources, not as openings. The lines under a posting are its own words, where it meets this brief.
- Senior Product Designer, New Channels · no longer posted
- Create co-branded patient journeys and landing pages, improve provider directory discoverability, and optimize conversion for patients arriving through payer channels.
- Design experiences for patients accessing care through employer EAP benefits.
- Principal Product Designer, Payer · no longer posted
- Designers are expected to use AI tools like Claude, Cursor, and MagicPatterns to prototype and stay involved through launch and iteration directly in code.
- Translate regulatory requirements and clinical standards into intuitive, human-centered experiences that make complex requirements feel manageable
This is the setup. The work is inside.
Running it puts you in the room: the full situation and its constraints, stakeholders who push back in their own words, and the decisions that are yours to make. What you produce becomes a Day One Plan — work you can show someone instead of describing.
Where similar work appears
Other live briefs connected to this one, and what connects them.
Similar problems at other organizations
Like this one, each of these is about people starting something and never quite finishing it.
Mobile enrollment from benefit emails has fallen to 16% after the first screen became generic.
You need to weigh faster message clarity against precise benefit language.
Booking completion fell to 71% once members reached the payment-information step.
You must weigh a faster clarification in the flow against the accuracy needed before members commit to care.
Membership-step completion has fallen to 59%, and shoppers are reopening plan details before leaving.
You have to weigh a clearer buying decision against the shortest possible checkout path.
The same setting, from another role
Each is set around Headway’s Headway for Payers, written for a different role. They’re separate briefs, not the same scenario.
Five of eight payer deals contain requests beyond approved proposal language.
You decide whether AI drafts those requests as marked terms or leaves them as questions for the seller.
Six qualified discussions lack agreement on who funds referrals from health systems.
You must weigh a payer's demand for predictable participation against health systems' refusal to guarantee patient volumes.
A payer's expansion now depends on three years of exclusivity across three states.
You must weigh guaranteed contribution against blocked deals while refusing commitments the network cannot substantiate.
Other problems with a similar purpose
In each of these, as in this one, the aim is to catch the moments a patient could lose momentum toward care and keep them moving forward instead.
Members who return after account creation are being sent back to the beginning instead of toward care.
You must weigh a faster return path against reliable account and entitlement state.
Eligible members are opening Pulse without taking a first step into care.
You must weigh earlier relevance against clinical boundaries in the first conversation.
Completion after eligibility has fallen from 78% to 66% at the final acknowledgement screen.
You have to weigh a clearer path into care against preserving an informed consent moment.