Led the end-to-end redesign of Aetna’s Find Care search experience across web and native platforms. Owned search as a core product surface, aligning user needs, business goals, and system-level design decisions.

The existing taxonomy-based search did not align with users’ mental models, making it difficult to surface exact matches or relevant suggestions. Users often entered natural language queries, but the system relied on rigid categorization, creating friction and missed intent.

Shifted the experience to better align with how users naturally search, balancing familiar patterns with emerging AI-driven behaviors. Introduced a hybrid approach that combined structured taxonomy with natural language interpretation to improve relevance and flexibility.

Redesigned search from a taxonomy-driven model into an autocomplete experience that could adapt to both structured and natural language inputs. Integrated LLM-supported suggestions to interpret user intent, surfacing exact matches when available while dynamically generating relevant results when queries were less defined.

Worked closely with back-end and front-end engineering, information architecture, and product teams to align on feasibility, data structure, and interaction design. This required coordinating across roadmap priorities while ensuring the experience could evolve alongside advancing AI capabilities.

Madison Poe © 1993