SSI Expansion
About the project
Informed product design that enabled 1 million+ elderly, blind, and disabled Californians to access CalFresh benefits through GetCalFresh (SNAP), demonstrating value to state partners and securing statewide adoption
In June 2019, California expanded CalFresh eligibility to include Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and State Supplementary Payment (SSP) recipients. This meant that over 1 million elderly, blind, disabled, and/or low-income residents who were not previously eligible for SNAP benefits would overnight become eligible. .
At the time, GetCalFresh, a mobile-first online CalFresh application tool, was slowly expanding county by county with the goal of statewide adoption. The SSI expansion was expected to overwhelm county workers and strain outdated systems throughout the state.
Our team leveraged the SSI expansion as an opportunity to demonstrate our product's value and accelerate our statewide adoption goal. Since this was a new population for us and for many county workers, I led research with soon-to-be eligible SSI/SSP recipients to inform our design decisions and ensure our product would meet their needs.
We chose in-depth interviews, usability testing, and a focus group to understand both individual experiences and collective needs of this vulnerable population.
Our team of 3 researchers led a designer, a program manager, and a product manager through this research in Los Angeles County, a key to statewide expansion. Given the county's size and diversity, I wanted to understand SSI/SSP recipients' experiences firsthand.
We planned
17 one hour in-depth interviews with usability tests1 two and a half hour focus group with 6 participantsIn-depth interviews gave us better understanding and context to participants' lived experiences. We reviewed official documents, observed their comfort with technology, and gathered rich contextual detail about how they navigated through the benefits process.
The focus group allowed us to understand what GetCalFresh would need to actually be utilized and successful within this demographic.
To remove barriers like transportation, scheduling, and overall security concerns, I allowed participants to choose the meeting locations. This led us to meet in their homes, local cafes, and public libraries.
The methodFinding the right people to talk toI recruited participants through Craigslist and Facebook ads with a screening form to gather basic information. I then screened each respondent by phone to ensure fit and disregarded those outside LA County.
How do SSI recipients receive, use, and manage their benefits?
Would certain large segments of this population be comfortable using an online application? If so, what disabilities do they have, and what are their accessibility needs?
What is participants' relationship to websites and online services? When do they choose to use or not use them (or get help) and why?
Given participants' feelings towards online services, what requirements would GetCalFresh need to support their use, and what should we avoid?
Research QuestionsKey InsightsFamily members provided extensive support to people who received SSI, through care work, time, and/or finances.
"He cooks, cleans, does laundry, takes me to doctors appointments, the psychiatrist every 3 months, primary care every month, he makes sure I have 3 meals a day. He drives from LA to Riverside 3 times a week… yeah he is tired all the time."
Cognitive disabilities and mental illnesses made getting through complex processes even more challenging.
"(The food bank) can be far on the bus and you gotta pack and it's just too much sometimes. I'm so tired sometimes."
Based on prior experience, SSI recipients weighed the value of benefits against the effort and frustration of obtaining them.
"I mean, do they just want you to give up?"
Quotes attributed by research participantsProduct
The most significant product decision to come out of this research was a prioritization of the Authorized Representative flow -- the pathway that allows caregivers, family members, and community organizations to help someone apply on their behalf. The depth of support networks we observed made clear this wasn't an edge case: Authorized Representative applications now account for roughly 20% of total submissions. Continued research and iteration later resulted in a dedicated flow for Social Security Administration staff to assist SSI recipients directly, further reducing the burden on applicants navigating the process alone.
Policy
Working closely with county staff, we identified questions in the application that created unnecessary friction for this population without serving a meaningful eligibility purpose. That work resulted in policy changes that removed those questions from the SNAP application, reducing burden at the process level rather than just the product level.
Strategy
Beyond the product itself, this research served a broader organizational goal. By bringing evidence-based insights about a newly eligible population to state partners before they had answers of their own, we positioned GetCalFresh as a trusted resource rather than just a vendor. The work was instrumental in building the relationship with Los Angeles County specifically -- the largest county in the state and the most important step in the path to statewide adoption. It demonstrated that investing in research with the people most affected by a policy change wasn't just the right thing to do; it was what made the product credible to the partners whose buy-in we needed.