Life Insurance Product
Product Design and UX process
Goal
As Product Designer at this company I was tasked with the research, concept, and design, of a mobile friendly digital application of a final expense life insurance product. Our client, which is a big name insurance agency who's name will be kept private for confidentiality purposes, tasked our team with acquisition of new customers through the use of landing pages.
My main task was to design a digital application, to give user's a quote and move them through a seamless journey that mirrors an agent led experience over the phone that includes: Pricing, qualifications, contact, payment, and a sign and review portion.
Background
My experience on this project was partnering with an internal group consisting of copywriters, developers, and business managers, to incubate and accelerate new products and services to change the life insurance ecosystem. By using UX best practices, user research, and testing, we strived to create the best user experience while meeting business requirements.
Role
Product Designer
Tools
- Sketch (High Fidelity Visual Design and Wireframe)
- Invision (Interactive Prototype)
- Userzoom (User Research and Usability Testing)
- Zoom/Slack/ Powerpoint Internal and Stakeholder communication
- Mural (User Mapping/Competive Research)
User Research and Findings
To understand the following information in order to build out a complete picture of personas for a Final Expense product:
- Background
- Any goals, attitudes, and concerns he/she would have when planning for retirement and end of life
- The experience and relevant knowledge the persona has in the area of final expense life insurance
- How he/she would interact with a final expense product (e.g. the voluntariness of use, frequency of use, and preferredinformation sources)
Tools:
In order to obtain these user insights the user insight platform UserZoom was used to recruit users from Intellizoom:
- Task1: Understanding participant’s background:
Participants were asked to talk about themselves as well as their family, their education background, and what they do for living
They were recorded via voice and video recording. - Task2: Retirement and End-of-Life goals. Their sources of information:
There are no websites or prototypes were shown for this task. Participants where asked to talk about retirement planning and end-of-life (EOL) planning. Question about EOL planning is structured to understand their perception and feelings about EOL planning.
They were also asked about social, professional, and networking groups that they belong to. - Task3 : Questionnaire and self research:
Participants were asked if they are familiar with a Final Expense product in life insurance. If answered No, they were sent to browse one of the websites (Lincoln Heritage, Colonial Penn, GlobeLife, or Final Wishes Covered) to get an understanding of Final Expense product. - Task4 – Final Expense product as a solution to their goals:
Questions were structured to understand how participants research for a final expense product; their goals when looking for life insurance, what product features or offers they are looking for; person or people they would consult with; their overall challenges when researching life insurance, determining factors to overcome the challenges; and buying process decision maker(s).
User's and Persona Creation:
Combing all data into represented users. "Fictional characters" that are used to promote empathy within product owners, designers, builders, and marketers. This helps product team to craft a product for the real people and not just for machinery.
User Flow
The goals were not only to communicate the user's experience, but also to create checkpoints where we could confidentially, securely, and efficiently collect sensitive user information.
This user flow is organized in multiple swim lanes, to not only communicate what the user would be experiencing through the interface of the application, but also communicating at what points our CRM would be storing user's information for lead generation. A backstage process for the agent was also communicated which would be similar to the user's journey, as well as different vendor integrations for KYC.
This user flow provided a solid framework before beginning the UI and design, in order to communicate to stakeholders and compliance where certain security checks would be taking place. Also to communicate to our development team and external vendors where back-end integrations should be taking place in order to complete KYC checks and payments.
A customer journey flow was also created to summarize the user's journey through the app on a higher level, in order to communicate to our marketing team where there would be contact touch points in the journey.
WIREFRAMES
After creating a style guide that adhered to our clients brand standards, I proceeded to mock up a wireframe journey with a mobile first approach. Below are some key parts of the journey, with their design solutions.
QUOTING PROCESS
• Progress form fields, user's will see one form field at a time to reduce cognitive load.
• Floating label input fields, to animate place holder text and guide users with context.
• Radio Button selections to reduce typing for selections
Plan Selection
• User will be able to swipe between different plans on mobile
• Coverage amounts can be toggle for low and high amounts
• Different payment frequency options available, with copy indicating savings
Health Questionnaire
• To reduce cognitive load, health questions are presented one by one in a multiple choice format to user
• Once user selects an option, the question will automatically scroll to the next question to reduce point and click exhaustion
Payment Selection
• Users will see a notification of their final price as they proceed to payment as a reminder before they proceed
• Users are presented with the option of credit and EFT payments. We have included the option of bank payments since our primary personas are age 51-65 years old.
Confirmation and Submit
• User's will be able to see a PDF summary of their application, filled in with their entries from the application. This will be included in their E-sign experience with an agent.
Full Wireframe
USER TESTING
USABILITY TESTING
Methodology:
Measure qualitative data through think out loud sessions and usability metrics through questionnaires measured on a Likert Scale. Determine the SUS (system usability scale) and NPS (Net Promotor Score) as a baseline and measurement of usability and growth of a product.
Environment:
Participants are joining the study using their own device, located at the comfort of their home, and performing each study task at their own pace. Through video and audio recording on their mobile phone.
Goals:
• Understand any friction points in the experience such as usability issue, security concerns, sensitivity in giving out personal information, and language confusion.
• Understand any misalignments between the journey and the user’s mental model (what the user already believes about the life insurance application process)
Meet the Users
Participant Background:
• The study was conducted with a total of 8 participants
• Primary Persona Age 50-60
• Secondary Persona Age 61-65
• Male participants (25%)/ Female participants (75%)
• Living Area: Suburban: (75%)/ Rural (25%)
• Marital Status: Divorced (13%)/ Married/Domestic Partner (87%)
• Annual household income
• Have or are you currently looking for life insurance?
• Life insurance decision maker
• Employment Situation
User's background were assessed in screener questions in order to participate in the study. We aimed to perform this usability study on users who fit our primary persona group. Age, income, and life insurance knowledge were the biggest determining factors.
Findings Summary
The study was split into 4 parts, the example below is a summary of one part of the qualitative findings, based on user's think-out loud comments as they moved through the application. Once user's had completed that section of the application they would answer questions on a likert scale to determine their sentiment.
System Usability (SUS) Score:
The System Usability Scale (SUS) is a 10-item Likert scale questionnaire that provides an at-a-glance look at the ease of use (or lack thereof) of websites, software, hardware, mobile devices, and other technological applications.
• SUS scores provide us with a useful metric to compare in the future. Changes to the journey and tests on the live site can be compared to this number.
• Is a very easy scale to administer to participants, it can be used on small sample sizes with reliable results, and it is valid – it can effectively differentiate between usable and unusable systems.
• Percentile rankings of 500 websites SUS
A score above 68 (the average SUS score) means your website is a more usable product
“Usable” in product experience:
Efficiency: How fast someone can use it
Intuitiveness: How effortlessly someone can understand it
Ease: How easy it is to use
Satisfaction: How much a user subjectively likes or dislikes using it
Final Application Prototype
Go ahead and give it a whirl!
My projects
