Healthcare

Building Aetna’s Behavioral Health Design System

14 months creating a unified digital experience.

Building Aetna’s Behavioral Health Design System

Results

Established two design systems with custom variants for Aetna’s sub-brands.

Modernized the legacy patient portal with 100+ screens redesigned across web, tablet, and mobile.

Created alignment across stakeholders with a UX audit that informed the new foundation.

Highlights / Intro

Aetna’s behavioral health platforms had grown inconsistent, with multiple teams and sub-brands working in silos. Patients faced fragmented experiences, and internal teams lacked a shared design language. To restore clarity and scale, unosquare partnered with Aetna to introduce a systemized approach that transformed both the portal and the design culture behind it.

Challenge

Aetna needed to:

Eliminate fragmented user experiences across sub-brands.

Create a scalable, component-based design foundation.

Update the patient portal to be intuitive, modern, and accessible on any device.

Solution

unosquare delivered a baseline design system and rebuilt Aetna’s digital ecosystem around it:

Conducted a UX audit that became the blueprint for alignment.

Delivered two robust design systems plus tailored versions for sub-brands.

Redesigned the patient portal end-to-end, bringing 100+ screens into a unified, responsive experience.

unosquare delivered a baseline design system and rebuilt Aetna’s digital ecosystem around it:

The Product Engineering COE, merging design and business strategy, developed a scalable component library that balanced accessibility, aesthetics, and alignment with Aetna’s behavioral health vision. 

The QA COE validated usability and compliance across devices, while the Data COE provided insight into patient interactions, setting the foundation for continuous optimization and smarter iterations ahead.

Building Aetna’s Behavioral Health Design System

When healthcare demands clarity, a strong design system becomes the foundation.

Next Starts Here

Let’s Modernize