SCADpro: Deloitte
Student Project
Developing Marketing Campaign in Federal Health Industry
Overview
Developing an impactful marketing campaign based on the insights from detailed mixed-method research across 7 different sectors in the federal health industry.
(Project under NDA – Details Obscured)
Methods
Mixed Method Research, Competitive Analysis, Blue Ocean Strategy, SWOT Analysis, Research Affinitization, Concept Identification, Prototyping, Strategy Framework
Meet the Team
14 students from 10+ majors
My Role
User Research Co-Lead
Tool
Figma, Adobe Suite
Duration
10 Weeks, 2024 Mar.- May
Key Takeaways
Understanding team dynamics, client expectations, and stakeholder constraints was crucial to moving the project forward smoothly.
Avoiding jargon and plain language helped bridge gaps in our cross-disciplinary team.
Weekly stand-ups helped us overcome team segmentation and maintain alignment across groups.
Supporting creative concepts with data and aligning visuals to client expectations increased buy-in from non-design stakeholders.
When interviews were hard to schedule, combining surveys with targeted outreach helped us gather meaningful insights efficiently.
Practicing empathy within the team and with clients/stakeholders was key to building trust, clarity, and impact.
The Challenge
Set the stage
As Deloitte continues to support federal health agencies in modernizing services, one persistent challenge is bridging the gap between legacy systems and emerging technologies to serve a diverse population better.
My work focused on understanding the health equity sector in the federal health industry, identifying the value within current service offerings from stakeholder interviews, and communicating the value of inclusive, human-centered services that improve healthcare access and experiences for underserved communities to target audiences, while navigating strict regulatory environments and complex stakeholder ecosystems.
My Approach
Begin with research
The team began by conducting secondary research on 7 different sectors within the federal health industry. Specifically, I focused on the health equity sector. Starting with understanding the definition, industry trends, market variables, and current practices around health equity from Deloitte and other competitors, I could identify the unique values that Deloitte brought to its clients and the market.
After a few qualitative interviews with related stakeholders and contextual inquiries with a wide range of stakeholders, the research team I co-led uncovered friction points in service delivery, communication breakdowns, and unmet needs, summarizing them into 8 critical areas we needed to focus on in the following process.
Collaboration
Empathy is the key
Throughout this project, empathy wasn’t just a user-centered design principle—it was the essential mindset that helped us overcome internal and external collaboration challenges. From working with cross-functional teammates to communicating with clients and stakeholders, empathy became the foundation of our process.
Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration
Our team brought together individuals from diverse professional backgrounds—marketing, service design, graphic design, film, etc While this diversity enriched our perspectives, it also created communication barriers. We often used different terminology to describe the same ideas, which led to confusion and misalignment.
Our solution was actively avoiding jargon and adopting plain, simple language in verbal and written communication. We made a conscious effort to explain concepts clearly and ensure mutual understanding.
Another challenge was the segmentation across smaller sub-teams, which made it difficult to stay aligned on project progress. To address this, we implemented weekly stand-up meetings where each group shared their updates, plans, and blockers. This rhythm kept everyone informed, aligned, and empowered us to support each other as needed.
Client Communication
Our client did not come from a creative background and valued data-driven, evidence-based approaches. Initially, they struggled to see the value of some of our conceptual or exploratory design methods.
To bridge this gap, we started supporting our ideas with quantitative data and clearly articulated the impact of our creative approaches on later-stage outcomes. We also aligned our visual presentations with the organization’s branding and potential final deliverables to help the client better visualize how our work could fit into their context. This built trust and mutual understanding over time.
Stakeholder Management
Scheduling interviews with internal stakeholders proved to be one of the biggest challenges. With a tight 10-week timeline and busy schedules across departments, securing time for meaningful conversations was difficult and risked delaying our progress.
To stay on track, we created a survey based on insights from our secondary research to identify common challenges. The survey results helped us craft highly targeted interview questions, which made the interviews more efficient and insightful. For stakeholders unable to attend interviews, we reached out via email to ensure their perspectives were still represented.
The Impact
Executive Interests
Leadership was particularly engaged by our research process and the rigor of our data sources. They saw the value in how we combined qualitative insights with quantitative evidence to inform our design direction. This strengthened their confidence in our approach and opened conversations around scaling the solution as part of a broader digital equity initiative.
Close with a vision
This project underscored that innovation is not just about adopting new technologies in the federal health sector—it’s about making those technologies accessible, empathetic, and impactful.
At Deloitte, where design, strategy, and technology converge, this mindset can help reshape how public services are delivered and value communication within business context—ensuring they are more equitable, efficient, and user-focused.
