Designing a carrier submission flow and small commercial intake wizard for insurance carriers and agents at DAIS Technology.
Timeframe
Timeframe
July 2019 - November 2019
My role
UI Designer
The Team
2 UX designers, 1 Principal UX designer, 1 UI Designer, 2 product owners/managers, 8 developers
Tools used for this project
Research, analysis, user interviews, user testing, a/b testing
Introduction
DAIS Technology is building tools to bring the Internet to the $1 trillion insurance industry and make insurance faster, more connected, and more productive. Also, DAIS helps agents and carriers turn their own data into their #1 asset, giving them analytics capabilities that have only been available to large insurtechs. The two of many ways they’re trying to bring technology to the insurance industry is by making the carrier submission and small commercial intake process much faster, easier to use, and most importantly - a familiar workflow that doesn’t impede on their work-life.
Problem statement (carrier submission wizard)
The landscape for insurance in 2019 was still in the dark ages. Case and point: underwriters and agents were submitting paperwork via fax still. That’s because the median age for both roles was anywhere between 45-50 years old and most insurance agencies never adopted or embraced technology like other companies. As an underwriter for a carrier I want to know if there are problems with my submissions, review upcoming work, address any changes that my clients have made, and quickly get to any messages. As designers, we asked ourselves, how do we create a product that is familiar and also new, simple and intuitive for our older user base, and create trust in our product so that an archaic industry adopts our product solution?
Problem breakdown
📑 Competing with paperwork
With an older user base, they’re not so receptive to drastic changes so we had to make sure that we were mirroring paperwork flows that would make sense in a digital form.
🚶Introduce new ideas in small steps
We knew that introducing new terminology or features might seem a little overwhelming so we decided to introduce said ideas over periods of time. Once underwriters got used to one workflow, we could introduce another feature in the future that would definitely help them. The idea is that we would help them quick wins first in order to secure adoption.
🤷 What should underwriters work on next?
During our user interviews, managers of underwriters wanted to make sure we created a feature where underwriters could feel comfortable with being independent in choosing what work they should prioritize.
🤦 Mistakes can be easily rectified
Every time our team asked how underwriters would rectify mistakes, 9 times out of 10 they would mention white out. We needed to make sure that our users didn't feel panicked if they made a mistake in our product and can easily adjust anything with ease and confidence.
The users of the carrier submission wizard
The carrier submission wizard is used by underwriters between the ages of 45-50 years old. They like the personal touches they can make when creating submissions and don't want to lose that humanity when doing their day-to-day job. It was made clear during our user interviews that it's important to them to keep the integrity of their work.
Carrier submission flow generates $1 million+ in the first 6 months of launching
Clear and concise statuses that underwriters use in their everyday vernacular
User scenario
As an underwriter, I want to see any changes in the status of my submissions so I know which submissions to prioritize.
Solution
Without knowing it, many underwriters that we interviewed from different carriers mentioned the same statuses of a submission. It was clear we could use their own vernacular in order to create statuses of a submission. Each status would be a signifier to an underwriter on what work to prioritize. Because of this, we made sure to create a status badge at the very top of their submission along with some helper text to act as a prompt on what underwriters should do next.
Keep in constant contact with agents that underwriters are working with
Past user frustration
Underwriters would complain that emails would get lost in translation and sometimes terms were forgotten when speaking with agents via phone.
Solution
Designing an in-chat system with agents so you never have to worry about things getting lost in email threads or unrecorded calls. As an underwriter, I can: chat with an agent, send and receive attachments, include others in a conversation, download my chat history,
Designing for scannability
At the end of our interview process, a senior UX design and I had a solid grasp on what needed to be designed. However, once we started designing, were curious as to what layouts would work best for underwriters. After digging into several Medium and Nielsen Norman group articles, we decided to do an a/b test on a z-pattern layout and an f-pattern layout. Once it was in front of underwriters it was very clear that the f-pattern layout was much more scannable for users as they were able to quickly navigate through screens and create a sense of familiarity with the navigation.
