Role - Lead / UX Researcher / Designer
Timeline - Two(2) Months
Tools - Figma, Google Surveys, Zeplin, Zoom
Methods Used - Competitive Analysis, Secondary Research, User Interviews, Testing, Mapping, User Persona / Journey, Problem Statements, Feature Prioritization, Prototyping & Iterating
All your insurance policies, in one place.
My team of Four and I designed an insurtech solution for people to view and access all of their insurance policies, in a single app: Insurify.
One of the most ubiquitous and legally necessary services to all Americans is insurance—for health, for life, for our pets, vision, travel, homes, and more—yet it’s one of the least understood, most complicated, and antiquated industries to this day.
There has long been room for disruption in the insurance industry, and Insurify enters the scene right at the crux of this need—pulling together all insurance policies and details into a convenient single app for people to quickly understand and easily access their insurance coverage.
Challenge
People have a multitude of insurance policies and platforms, all with various renewal dates, rates, coverages, fees, and more. It's hard to find what you'll pay when you walk in for a health procedure, how many miles are included in your car insurance tow policy, or whether you should increase your life insurance plan because of a new job...
🎯 Project Goals
Create a more user-centered solution to insurance
Provide a simple way to organize, view, and access insurance
Give people more control of their coverage and benefits
🔎 Problem Statement
How might we give people a way to view and access their insurance policies, agnostic to the insurance provider or area of coverage, to keep track of their policies in one place?
The Solution
My team and I created a modern solution, full of features that take the headache out of insurance for our users, including:
01 A single account login for all insurance policies and plans
02 View and align billing schedules across accounts
03 Benefits and coverage details pulled into a simple dashboard
Impact
My team and I designed a native mobile app with a set of core features that addressed highest priority user needs, interests, and goals identified directly from our research. These features gave users the ability to add, view, and access their insurance policies, align all bills on the same schedule, and view and access their benefits across all providers and accounts in a clear dashboard.
💬 Here’s what we heard from a few users:
"I need this in my life right now—it would be so much easier to have access to all my insurance in one place."
“Why doesn’t this exist!? I’d love to see all my benefits like this to be able to take advantage of them."
We tested a variety of screen flows that met the goals and needs of our users, and here's how our design improved people's experience:
12.7 seconds faster
Users completed the flows 12.7 seconds faster
4.6/5 easiness rating
We improved easiness by 0.9 points (from 3.7 to 4.6)
23% more direct completions
Users completed the flow 23% more directly
I was able to create an insurtech app that solved our users’ biggest needs — but how exactly did we get here?
Read more about my research and design process below ⬇️
BUSINESS RESEARCH
Assessing the insurance landscape and competition 👀
Before diving into interviews, we took a look at the insurtech space and competitors to better understand what features were already offered. We wanted to learn what users had become accustomed to, what other providers were doing well, and areas they were falling short that we could fill a need and add value.
Key takeaways
1. Not a single provider or app allows you to add other insurance providers to their own
2. Most apps are clunky and buggy
3. Lemonade is the most modern and intuitive for today's user
USER RESEARCH & SYNTHESIS
What did we hear from users?
I conducted user research with five members of our target audience (Gen-Z and Millennials with 3+ active insurance policies), drawing together really great insights about the pain points and needs of our users.
“I can’t remember my passwords and I hate downloading so many insurance apps.”
“I’m not sure even if I’m using all my benefits because I have no idea how to check them.”
'“My insurance policies live in my emails or my paper filing cabinet that I never want to open.”
“I’d rather text a chatbot than talk to someone on the phone.”
Key takeaways
1. We needed to provide a single place for users to view all their insurance policies
2. We needed to create a way for users to view upcoming bills and see payment schedules in one place
3. We needed to create a helpful visual tool for users to better take advantage of their benefits
“It would be helpful to see what other people have in my area, to be sure I’m equally as insured.”
PERSONA
Who are we designing for?
We summarized our research and the needs, challenges, and goals of our target audience by creating a single, fictitious ‘persona,’ whom we named Miya. Miya became a helpful way to remind us of who the user is and focus our design and development efforts on solving the user’s problems.
Meet Michelle!
JOURNEY MAP
What do users need?
We mapped out how Michelle would move through the process of finding and organizing her insurance in order to visualize the steps, probably pain points, touchpoints with websites, and her emotions throughout the process. These findings ensured we were designing a product that solved our users’ challenges.
Key takeaways
1. We needed to have clear, concise language (not legalese) for users to better understand their coverage details
2. We needed to build a seamless sign-up process that pulls personal information across all accounts
3. We needed to make one app, similar to a digital wallet, for all insurance policies
4. We needed to create the option to align payment schedules across all accounts
5. We needed to provide better diagrams and data visualization to view benefits, deductibles, expiring benefits
IDEATION
Prioritizing most-needed features
We took the core insights and began the ideation process. We first prioritized the most important features and capabilities needed to solve our persona’s challenges and goals through feature prioritization.
Our must-have features include:
1. Insurance cards
2. Single sign-in to all accounts
3. Payment/billing information
4. Ability to schedule bills together
5. Clear coverage details
"Add new" insurance cards quickly
SKETCHES
Early design concepts
We began to sketch key features out with a design studio — a rapid-fire approach to quickly explore various concepts and ideas, and collaborate with team members to identify the best ones. We wanted our designs to accomplish three main goals:
Add a new insurance policy and view the policy card + details
View all payments and schedule bills together
View benefits, particularly FSA benefits remaining in the account
We chose the best designs from each of our sketches to bring into mid-fidelity.
Home/dashboard screen
View benefits dashboard
Add new insurance policy
View payments and schedule bills
MID-FIDELITY → HI-FIDELITY USER TESTING
Testing with users
To see if our product was helpful to users, we went through two rounds of usability testing, with a total of 10 users. We gathered feedback and data and made revisions to address problem areas. After our first round of feedback, we updated our designs to hi-fidelity.
Below are the major areas for improvement we gathered from our users over two rounds of testing:
Minimizing distracting details
(Before)
Users tried to click the text rather than “+” when it was on the left side
Users spent time trying to read the fine print on the insurance card page
(After)
We moved the “+” buttons to the right side and made the full-text clickable
We removed the insurance details from the screen to keep our users focused on the main card function
Welcome To the Insurify App
Take a look at some of the major features we incorporated to aid users in their access, organization, and understanding of insurance.
Single sign-on and policy dashboard
Home dashboard with all policies available
My team and I knew that Insurify needed to come across as immediately valuable and trustworthy from the get-go—so we decided to use a single-sign-on API (Okta) so users would feel confident signing into all accounts through Insurify. We created a dashboard of individual “insurance cards” (a truncated version of their policies) to live on the main screen, and made these scrollable so they could quickly access the policy they needed.
Adding new insurance to the app
Process of adding a new insurance policy to the app.
We wanted one of the core features of the app to be an easy way to add new insurance to the app—as users expressed changing insurance frequently with new jobs and other life changes. Here, they can add a new policy to their dashboard by seamlessly finding their insurance provider and adding their policy number.
Combining and scheduling payments
Viewing all billing schedules together, with an option to combine payments
Some of the biggest pain points heard from users were hidden fees, payment schedules, and unknown bills. PoliFolio pulls all insurance fees and bills into a single app and offers a place to both view these details, as well as combine all premiums into a single annual or monthly payment.
Viewing your benefits
Dashboard of benefits across accounts
Users overwhelmingly expressed annoyance with realizing their benefits had expired and they didn't know about it. Insurify provides users with a dashboard of all their benefits across accounts, so they understand what to take advantage of before losing things like a healthcare visit or a flexible spending account balance.
NEXT STEPS & REFLECTIONLooking forward, looking back...
Next steps:
If we had more time as a team, we would take the following actions:
Consider getting rid of the hamburger menu and adding all its contents into a more comprehensive Account page
Remove the Home button but use “My Policies” to link to the main page
Build out additional functional pages across the app, including Account, Compare Providers, Notifications, and Settings
Activate the Agent Chatbot function and test it with users
Conduct additional rounds of high-fidelity prototype user testing on any new or updated features
Reflection
This project is one that I’ve been pondering for a LONG time. My Friend is in the insurance business and has long expressed frustration with the lack of technological advancements to help his clients understand their coverage, fees, and benefits. “My clients have different providers for each of their major insurance policies… yet there is no easy way for them to access and understand these in one place…”
This was a fun way to begin to understand a MASSIVE industry and to find innovative and creative ways (within the bounds of bureaucracy) to simplify the experience for users. Below are a few more of my ponderings and learnings:
Who would build this? 🤔
This is a question my team and I pondered frequently while researching and designing within the insurance world. It soon just became part of the larger commentary on the American healthcare system and insurance industry writ large - there is no incentive to give Americans greater access and visibility to the benefits they’re already paying for, and no insurance company would willingly allow other providers onto their platform. Yet there is clearly a strong need for this. It would have to be a third-party app, like PoliFolio, to pull this off and also have the best interests of the user in mind.