California Department of Health Services County Portal

Project details

  • California has a population of 180,000+ people experiencing homelessness and substance use disorders. In 2024, the state of California passed prop 1, an initiative that aims to strengthen California’s behavioral health system by funding mental health treatment, substance use disorder services, and supportive housing for veterans and individuals facing homelessness.

  • I was brought onto the project to help design the county portal. The county portal was the application where counties across the state of California would interface with the state government to request resources for the prop 1 project.

  • I led UX design for California DHCS’s Behavioral Health Transformation initiative, designing over 80 application pages for the Planning Management Portal. I created end-to-end user flows for key features, built 50+ high-fidelity application pages to support user testing, and facilitated more than 20 cross-functional workshops to align research, engineering, and stakeholder priorities.

  • Over the course of 16 months, we were able to release the county portal with a 93% satisfaction rate. Users were able to sign up for a county portal account and begin filling out their plans to improve their county.

Working with AI engineers and product owners, I was the lead designer in regards to creating a new AI review tool. Its primary purpose is to help with the DHCS application review process

Working with AI engineers and product owners, I was the lead designer in regards to creating a new AI review tool. Its primary purpose is to help with the DHCS application review process

Collaborating with UX research, engineering, and PO's, the design team and I were able to build out numerous application pages that aligned with the DHCS policy manual.

Collaborating with UX research, engineering, and PO's, the design team and I were able to build out numerous application pages that aligned with the DHCS policy manual.

When it came to building an application from the ground up, all iterations had to be considered. Error states, success states, and in progress states.

When it came to building an application from the ground up, all iterations had to be considered. Error states, success states, and in progress states.

Onboarding users to the application was a practice we had outlined with a user flow, and working with engineering, I designed this intuitive dashboard focused on an invite approach for users.

Onboarding users to the application was a practice we had outlined with a user flow, and working with engineering, I designed this intuitive dashboard focused on an invite approach for users.

When counties arrived onto the platform, they needed a place to see all their pending items and potential applications they could fill out. This dashboard design was implemented after user testing feedback loops led us to a simple yet practical desig

When counties arrived onto the platform, they needed a place to see all their pending items and potential applications they could fill out. This dashboard design was implemented after user testing feedback loops led us to a simple yet practical design.

As county users filled out applications, DHCS would need to review and approve or deny those applications. This dashboard represents how the DHCS user would view incoming requests, assignments, and track progress of their assigned tasks.

As county users filled out applications, DHCS would need to review and approve or deny those applications. This dashboard represents how the DHCS user would view incoming requests, assignments, and track progress of their assigned tasks.

As we worked hand in hand with developers, we would build out high fidelity product pages, and present them in working sessions with engineering and our PO. The annotations you see here are one of the ways we communicated requirements and behaviors a

As we worked hand in hand with developers, we would build out high fidelity product pages, and present them in working sessions with engineering and our PO. The annotations you see here are one of the ways we communicated requirements and behaviors as the design was handed off to dev teams.

Along with the annotations, we worked with dev teams to hand off all iterations of a page, from empty state to error state, all of the iterations worked through.

Along with the annotations, we worked with dev teams to hand off all iterations of a page, from empty state to error state, all of the iterations worked through.

Counties would use this page to navigate between sections of their plan. Before submitting for DHCS review, they could use this page to get a quick overview of what sections were complete, what needed to be done, and if there were any requests attach

Counties would use this page to navigate between sections of their plan. Before submitting for DHCS review, they could use this page to get a quick overview of what sections were complete, what needed to be done, and if there were any requests attached to their plan.

A challenge we had when designing the county portal was giving the users the control they asked for without over complicating the design. To combat this, we utilized all the space we had and tried to make the features as simple and intuitive as possi

A challenge we had when designing the county portal was giving the users the control they asked for without over complicating the design. To combat this, we utilized all the space we had and tried to make the features as simple and intuitive as possible.

Notifying the county user of behaviors and patterns of the application was a 2 step process. Step 1 being that the training provided to the users must be informative enough to give them the context of using a brand new application. Step 2 was the des

Notifying the county user of behaviors and patterns of the application was a 2 step process. Step 1 being that the training provided to the users must be informative enough to give them the context of using a brand new application. Step 2 was the design of the application must be intuitive enough and draw from other popular products so that the user has an easier time utilizing the application.

As we designed, we had to make a consistent effort to verify the behaviors we are instilling in the users were the same through out the application process, what action was disruptive, what action should be easy, and why.

As we designed, we had to make a consistent effort to verify the behaviors we are instilling in the users were the same through out the application process, what action was disruptive, what action should be easy, and why.

As we designed the county portal, certain features like case notes and activity log were going to be integrated in the near future. For MVP however, we built out the pages with the required features and have the extra features being released in stage

As we designed the county portal, certain features like case notes and activity log were going to be integrated in the near future. For MVP however, we built out the pages with the required features and have the extra features being released in stages as the product gained more use.