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U.S Department of Veteran's Affairs

Accredited Representative Portal

Claimant page

Design evolution of the Claimant Page for the Accredited Representative Portal, showing ideation, refinements, and final design decisions leading into usability testing.

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Context

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This work emerged from early “north star” ideation sessions exploring how the Accredited Representative Portal could evolve beyond its initial launch. A key gap in the existing experience was the lack of a centralized way for representatives to search for a specific claimant and confidently take action on their behalf.

The long-term vision included enabling representatives to:

  • search for and select a claimant

  • view claimant-specific information

  • submit claims directly from a claimant-level page

  • and eventually track claim and submission history over time.

My work focused on early design exploration for a Claimant Page that could support these needs at launch, while remaining flexible enough to grow as additional data and functionality became available. This work closely overlapped with parallel efforts on claimant search, led by another designer.

My Role

I was key Designer to the claimant page and submit forms designs, and a collaborator on claimant search. I worked closely with engineering, product and design partners to define information hierarchy, explore page structure, and align early design decisions with both user expectations and technical constraints.

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Design Problem

Accredited representatives need a reliable way to identify the correct claimant and confirm they are authorized to act on that claimant’s behalf. In existing tools (such as QuickSubmit and third-party systems), representatives expect to quickly verify basic Veteran information, confirm power of attorney, and initiate claim submissions without ambiguity.

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The challenge was to design a Claimant Page that:

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  • helped representatives confirm they had selected the correct Veteran (especially when multiple Veterans share the same name)
     

  • clearly surfaced whether a power of attorney had been established
     

  • supported claim submission workflows
     

  • and avoided overwhelming users with incomplete or unavailable data

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Given data limitations at launch, the solution needed to start simple while establishing a foundation for future expansion.

Initial Scope vs. Future Vision

Initial focus included:

  • basic identity information sourced from a master person index

  • power of attorney history

  • the name of the representative or organization currently working with the Veteran

  • a way to start claims from the claimant page

  • a high-level summary of prior submissions.

Future state vision:

Over time, this page could evolve into a more comprehensive, 360-degree view of the Veteran, including claim status, disability information, and a complete submission history,  enabling representatives to manage ongoing work more efficiently from a single place.

Early Exploration & Design Approach

The Claimant Page went through several rounds of design exploration to determine the most intuitive layout, information hierarchy, and task flow for accredited representatives. These explorations helped us move from broad ideation toward a structured direction that could be validated through usability testing.

What we were exploring:

  • What should a Claimant Page contain at launch?

  • How might representatives confirm they’re acting for the correct Veteran?

  • What information is essential vs. deferrable?

  • What data can we access with our VA api’s?

  • How to prioritize claimant verification and POA status

  • How do we show a representative the submission history for a claimant?

  • How representatives might move from review → action

  • Do we show all the available info from the POA request details page?

  • think through how we want to structure that info on the page. Think outside of the design system for now.

  • How do you start a submission from the claimant page?

Stage 1 - Initial Ideation

Goal: Explore consolidating claimant information and surfacing key actions upfront.

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Potential flow A

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  • Sidebar information broken into distinct rows to improve scannability.

  • Maintained a single-page flow from claimant search to claimant details.

  • Explored whether visually separating content reduced cognitive load without introducing additional navigation.

Potential flow B

Stage 2 - Refined Concepts

Goal: Introduce structure and test clearer separation of information and actions.

  • Conducted a comprehensive content audit and collaborated with engineers to confirm what data could realistically be pulled from VA APIs.

  • Introduced VA design system components, including sidebar navigation, tags, and tables.

  • Explored a 4-tab layout separating Claimant Overview, POA details, Submit Claims, and Submission History.

4 Tab Layout

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3 Tab Layout with power of attorney information on the claimant overview page - front and center

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Optional layout exploring a segmented tab approach, and persistent action links on top

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Stage 3 - Refined 3-Tab Approach

Goal: Simplify navigation while preserving clarity and future scalability.

  • Further iterations led to convergence on a 3-tab sidebar navigation approach.

  • Separated Claimant Overview, Submit Claims, and Submission History into distinct tabs to reduce cognitive load and clarify tasks.

  • Refined POA details based on confirmed data availability from VA systems.

  • Maintained a clear path from claimant verification to action, while keeping submission workflows isolated for future expansion.

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Stage 4 - Final Revisions Before Testing

Goal: Determine the clearest way for representatives to begin claim submissions.

Explored two final approaches for entering the submission flow:

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​​Direction 1: A coupled card combining form download and “Start Claim” actions. Scalable for future state with more forms.

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Direction 2: A dedicated Download Forms tab with access to VA Find a Form tool, start form submission links in header.

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Stage 5 - Final Approach Selected for Testing

Goal: Validate clarity, prioritization, and scalability of the claimant experience.

  • Moved forward with the 3-tab side navigation approach, restructuring the claimant page’s information architecture to reduce cognitive load.

  • Placed alerts intentionally to surface the most time-sensitive and high-priority information without overwhelming the page.

  • Link to the original POA request page from the recent representation requests section.

  • Separated Submit Forms into its own dedicated page, enabling future integration with the VA.gov “Find a Form” tool and expansion to support additional form types.

  • Designed the Submit Forms page to support multiple submission paths:

    • Form upload for standard submissions

    • Instant submission for ITF, with a framework that allows additional instant-submit forms to be added over time

 

So that in the future...

  • We will have pre-filled pdf forms or more pre-filled information, this is a high value feature. 


  • There will be different APIs to use to submit forms, some of which will allow for “auto establishment,” some which will only allow for pdf. 
Though we may always want people to have the option to submit by pdf.

Interactive Figma Prototype

What We Tested & Why

With the converged design in place, usability testing with accredited representatives focused on validating whether the Claimant Page supported task completion, clarity, and confidence. Testing evaluated:

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  • Searching for claimants: whether representatives could successfully locate the correct claimant and if search inputs/results aligned with their expectations.
     

  • Interpreting claimant information: whether critical details like POA status, VSO representation, and submission history were clear and actionable.
     

  • Navigating the interface: whether representatives understood the purpose of each section, the sidebar navigation, and the tabbed layout.
     

  • Submitting claims: whether representatives could successfully initiate and complete submissions from the Claimant Page, following the designed workflow. Whether this workflow lined up with their expectations for efficiency.

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  • Tracking claims: whether representatives would need to see the historical view of claims submitted. 

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The goal was to confirm that design decisions supported real-world workflows and identify opportunities for improvement before expanding functionality.

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