Demystifying the process of buying homeowners’ insurance

OBJECTIVE

For many people, their home represents their biggest expenditure. Protecting that sanctuary is important, but it can be confusing to figure out how much insurance coverage you need. Too little, and you can be exposed when disaster strikes; too much, and it feels like money wasted if you’re lucky enough to never need it.

 

I joined a project via a digital agency that was tasked with enabling an easy and transparent way to purchase homeowners’ insurance. It’s a surprisingly complex process, with lots of decisions to be made that can affect what would be paid out in replacement value when making a claim. The team had already established that using visuals could help our customers and prospects more readily match their home’s features, and understood from research that our users wanted advice and guidance. And, the mobile and tablet experience was critical.

Adding to the importance of our mission was the client’s mission: offering insurance and financial products to veterans and their families. Their dedication to their audience was heartfelt and impressive. I was happy to be part of a team that took up the mantle of the client mission and sought to deliver the best experience possible for these important people.

MY ROLE

As a UX team member on the project, I:

  • Conducted discovery interviews and research to dig into user pain points, needs, and gaps in the current experience

  • Triangulated existing research to ensure a comprehensive strategy to fit in within the overarching system being established across products

  • Worked with UI design and content team members to create a visually compelling, straightforward process with guidance at the users’ fingertips

  • Co-opted these designs for use by customer service representatives looking to walk members through the process

  • Created desktop, mobile, and tablet views of the new process using the established UI design system components as much as practical

  • Led regular usability testing, remote moderated as well as un-moderated, to gain insights from real users in order to optimize our solution

DELIVERABLES

Discovery: stakeholder and user interviews; usability testing of current solution; documentation of findings, recommendations and site strategy.
UX: sitemaps; responsive wireframes at 3 breakpoints for prospective policyholders and customer service reps; clickable prototype; ongoing usability testing.

OUTCOMES

  • A new, intuitive buying process, continually road-tested with real users and refined for optimal functionality

  • Clear, comprehensive guidance with visual aids for easy home characteristic identification and accessible contextual help when needed

  • Best Customer Experience ranking according to Temkin Experience Ratings