Disclaimer: This case is confidential, and its use is only cited for hiring processes.

01. Context and customer issues

This insurance company is not a monster like others I have worked with. Still, it has a particular service that makes it stand out: it is the only insurance company that can cover people over 65 years of age and/or people with a pre-existing disease, with its due increase in the premium, but at last, they do it. In addition, it has products that cover Major Medical Expenses and shows the importance of prevention programs. This is a plus for the final user who sees medical expense insurance as a product they will never use, so it is not worth investing in. 

Our client, Plan Seguro Insurance Co., has been in business for many years and has agents that have grown with the company, but now seeks to prevail, and for this, it has to change towards the "digital era" not only internally but also in the tools it provides to the agents to carry out their work, an aspect in which it is already lagging behind vs. other insurers that have several tools and Quoters systems to support the sale.

Why did this client seek consulting? 

When the project started, PSI Co. already had a quoting tool. It used a customized spreadsheet so that the agent could quote different insurance plans, but it was susceptible to lag between versions and be manipulated by the agents. With a view to its digital transformation, this company was looking to digitize the quoting process and was looking for help taking into account the needs of its insurance agents while keeping sight of the objectives and constraints of the business.

What were the objectives of the project?

1. Align stakeholders on the problems to be solved and the business objectives linked to this project.

2. Simplify the quotation and application processes to make PSI Co. stand out vs the competitors, providing added value to the agents and aligning their needs with the business objectives.

3. Digitize the current quotation/application process, making it accessible from any device.

4. Design the tool containing the algorithms to calculate 6 company products.

5. Design a content management system (CMS) so that the product team of PSI Co. could update and manage the products that the agent sees in the quoter.

Who were the users?

Since we would handle both sides of the sale, the quoter and CMS, our users were also divided. In the quoting system, the users were multi-branch insurance agents who worked with PSI Co. to have one more option in their product catalog to offer, mainly to people over 64 years old and with pre-existing diseases. These agents could be affiliated with promoters or "free" agents. The CMS users are employees of the insurance company dedicated to designing the Major Medical Expenses and Health Plans products. This work has a constant flow since the products may vary throughout the year for various reasons and are updated periodically.

2. What methodologies were applied in the project?

Throughout this project, we worked using agile ideation and co-design methodologies that allowed us to move forward quickly while maintaining sight of delivering value and including the business in the conversation. For the first part of the project, we conducted 2 workshops:

• Problem statement

• Product vision

These exercises helped us to know from the business perspective what they determined as users, problems, needs, objectives, barriers, and their vision for the project. Subsequently, a joint workshop was held to map the agent's Journey regarding insurance sales, mainly investigating the necessary processes from quotation to issuance. Subsequently, different talks were held with the Control Desk and Customer Service areas to learn about the main problems of the insurance company with the agents and of the agents with the insurance company. Finally, in this immersion stage, we conducted a series of 1:1 interviews with users who directly and indirectly coexist with the process of quotation and issuance of policies:

• Promoters: 2

• Officials: 5

• Agents: 5

This approach was complemented by the agent's perspective. Although they were grateful for their profession and the relations with P Insurence Co., they were also witnesses of the growth of the company and how this was taking them more and more to the experience related to the giant insurance companies with which they do not like to work because of the distance and cold in the treatment as well as close to the negotiation. 

At this stage, I wondered how I could change the perception of both parties with the improvement of important issues within the journey and that perhaps just the exercise of trying to improve could already change the perception of both parties because it created a bridge of communication that although it would be temporary at first, if we managed to make the benefits become evident, it could be a permanent path.

Ideation

In the ideation stage, we embarked on two simultaneous efforts. The first was to distill the findings from interviews with the sales force and stakeholders to identify which issues we could address by redesigning the quoting tool. This also helped us pinpoint priorities and tasks happening offline to consider them in the ideation process and seek complementary perspectives regarding potential functionalities to address. The team consisted of:

• Senior Project Manager

• Senior + Junior Product Managers

• Information Architect and Technical Lead

• Product Designer / UX Research strategist (ME!😉)

• UI Designer specialist

• UX Writer 

During the solution definition and ideation, we held continuous sessions to develop the flows and functionalities within the platform. As a team, we engaged in ongoing debates in front of the whiteboard, discussing how and why each step was taken, which usability criteria it addressed, what user problems it solved, how it complemented the sales process, and how it helped the business manage products and convey information directly to agents. Simultaneously, we carried out specific tasks according to our expertise, such as:

• Creating the UI Kit for both platforms

• Developing algorithms to accurately calculate the 5 products that would be featured on the platforms

• Defining the tone and voice of communication through the platforms.

• Designing usability tests based on proposed solutions, the objectives of each test, and how they would be executed.

Product Research 

To develop the initial hypotheses, we considered the 1:1 interviews we conducted with users and the process journey we crafted with the business. This led to the first version of wireframe flows, which were refined into the final prototype based on findings from usability tests. Additionally, we continued with interviews and discussions with the product team from insurer P, aiming to gain an in-depth understanding of their processes to create a coherent CMS product to assist them in their tasks. Below, I describe the methodologies used in the research and development of this product:

• Stakeholder Interviews (Definition Sessions).

• Usability Tests with Agents: Two usability test rounds were conducted, employing 1:1 interviews and think-aloud protocols during task execution. During these sessions, we asked participating users to perform three tasks related to their quoting process while trying to envision these tasks in their real-life context. This exercise allowed participants to share detailed information about real-life scenarios encountered during quoting, comparisons with other insurers' quoting tools, and actual experiences where the quoting tool would have been an advantage or disadvantage—all while navigating through the flows and observing how they interacted with them, what enhancements it could bring to their process, and what friction points it generated. 

• Usability Test with Internal Users.

• Product Circles: This was an internal resource at the consulting firm where teams assigned to different projects presented the rationales of their projects to the entire company to receive questions and feedback at various points in the process. This method helped us gain a broader perspective and avoid biases. The sessions were also open to client participation and their team, which benefited them by joining critical thinking sessions.

3. What was my role in the project?

Product Designer: My role as a product was end to end since the beginning of the project:

• I actively participated in both platform's ideations stages The Quoter System and the CMS. 

• Together with the developer, I defined the logic of the product states within the CMS.

• I collaborated with my dupla in the UI design and the explanatory documentation of all the flows of these states.

• I was in charge of communicating the design to different parts of the team (developers, other designers,  and product people), as well as presenting the progress to the client in each sprint.
  
  

UX Research Strategist: As a researcher, I was responsible for designing the interviews, documenting them, and presenting the patterns and actionable insights discovered. My tasks included:

• Creating recruitment screeners.

• Manage and define resources to implement the research.

• Establishing user touchpoint protocols, defining the methodology, and designing the test based on the research objectives.

• Generating interview scripts that were easy for team members without research experience to understand so they could assist with notes or execute with minimal friction in the process.

• Training the team to support by taking notes and documenting the sessions.

• Conducting interviews and usability tests.