Claimant Page Redesign for VA Portal
Kate Allbee
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.
TLDR: Designed a claimant management experience for accredited representatives, from north star vision through five stages of iteration to a usability-tested prototype, handed off to engineering for the next release phase.
Context
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 Role
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.
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.
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.
The challenge was to design a Claimant Page that:
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
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:
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.
First round design pass
First round design pass
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
3 Tab Layout with power of attorney information on the claimant overview page - front and center
Optional layout exploring a segmented tab approach, and persistent action links on top
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.
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:
Direction 1: A coupled card combining form download and “Start Claim” actions. Scalable for future state with more forms.
Direction 2: A dedicated Download Forms tab with access to VA Find a Form tool, start form submission links in header.
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.
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:
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.
Tracking claims: whether representatives would need to see the historical view of claims submitted.
The goal was to confirm that design decisions supported real-world workflows and identify opportunities for improvement before expanding functionality.
Like this project
Posted Mar 31, 2026
Designed the Claimant Page for the VA's Accredited Representative Portal for usability and scalability.
