Client
Designlab UXA
Individual project
Duration
Jul - Aug 2020
4 weeks, 20 hrs / wk
Contribution
UX design, research, visual identity, copywriting, prototyping and testing, responsive design
As someone who understands how frustrating and convoluted the topic of insurance is, research was needed to identify existing strengths and and improvements that can be made in the insurance market and understand insurance needs among younger consumers.
A quick competitive analysis of insurance companies (Oscar, Statefarm, Progressive, Allstate, and MetLife) showed:
- Insurance sites are loaded with information, which can be overwhelming
- The main call-to-action is typically to get a quote
- Most insurance companies generally highlight home, auto, and life insurance. Health is generally not popular as there are insurance companies specifically focused on healthcare
I also conducted interviews with 5 participants, all of whom are in their mid 20s, with the exception of one participant who is in his 30s and is married with children. The main takeaways from the interviews revealed that:
- There is a general attitude of indifference towards insurance
- Insurance is confusing and costly
- Users value speed
- Users want online accessibility as in-person processing is inconvenient, and want online services to be functional, updated, and provide comprehensive information all in one place
- People who are employed through a company usually get health insurance through work benefits, and don't see insurance needs outside of that
Given that most of the users I interviewed didn't think of insurance as much, apart from the slightly older participant than the rest, I put more thought into the type of user who may worry about insurance more. This brought about the idea to design for freelancers who are not insured through a company, and someone who has more assets to worry about that would require buying insurance other than health.
I mapped out a user flow to gauge how users might interact with the website. I outlined the user experience with a flow consisting of four main functions that I found were the main tasks in competitor sites:
- Learning about the company and about insurance
- Getting an insurance quote
- Signing up for an account
- Changing insurance settings (existing users)
Based on previous research, younger consumers have expressed interest in a more user friendly insurance buying experience. The message of Kaus, therefore, is towards efficiency, clarity, speed, and friendliness - values that are familiar and desirable for younger users. I drew inspiration from sites like Oscar, which found success by making something complicated easy to understand and using data to streamline processes and choices.
With style implemented, I created a mid-fidelity prototype with one main task flow: to get a homeowners insurance quote and enroll in the cheapest plan. For the sake of seeing users' response on the dashboard as well, the flow assumes that users are existing Kaus customers.
The importance of designing and showcasing the dashboard is due to freelancers typically having to do their own admin. The design of the dashboard came about by researching accounting software like Quickbooks and Wordpress management tool to understand the design patterns of platforms that freelancers may already be familiar with. In order to address ease of use, I included the option to integrate different accounts like the user's calendar or accounting so that Kaus becomes a more all-encompassing insurance management system.
Using this mid-fidelity prototype, I conducted usability testing on 5 participants. Each user was asked to complete the same task of getting a homeowners insurance quote, and enrolling in the standard plan. Multiple paths were available, where users can get a quote directly from the homepage, or by going to the homeowners insurance product page to learn more, before going through the quote process. Based on the findings, I was able to identify some similar comments about how the design that could be improved, and what was successful, listed out in an affinity map below:
Participants were aware that insurance is important, albeit convoluted, and wanted to read more about the plan itself before committing to enrolling and purchasing. This meant creating an extra page in the flow for users to read about the standard plan. With this in mind, I iterated the design to the below.
The lack of clarity in the insurance market often makes the topic confusing for many, and this need to be able to find information online is a necessity for younger consumers. Further refinements can be made with a much more fully fleshed out high-fidelity prototype for additional testing.
Because the topic of insurance is so specific and requires a wide range of information for each insurance type, improvements to the copy and content should also be prioritised by those who are experts in this field.
This was my first project where I applied UX research and design techniques that I learned from Designlab’s User Experience Academy program. A few key takeaways from this experience:
- Establishing a cohesive visual system, even for an insurance website typically seen as fairly mundane compared to other ‘e-commerce’ sites, was incredibly important to communicate visual style that would appeal to a large group of younger consumers
- User research puts your whole project into context. While it is easy to approach design with your own visual lens, conducting interviews with several potential users, even if only a few, really helped clarify the language I wanted to use and what features to incorporate. The challenge was ultimately finding the right users, seeing that the user persona I created was a freelancer. Due to time and pandemic constraints, the research process was a little lacking.
- Copy can make or break the user experience. I pursued a somewhat challenging project for myself considering I know very little about insurance. For a topic as specific as insurance, content and wording helps show the personality of a corporate brand and what it can offer. As someone who is not a skilled copywriter, coming up with copy definitely was quite a challenge and required lots of secondary research.
