Kaus Insurance
An Insurance e-commerce website, making insurance a little less boring
Kaus has been in the market for over 30 years but avoided the e-commerce boom which negatively impacted the business. They began to see an opportunity to increase sales and rebrand in a digital era and cater to a younger audience.
Timeline: Aug – Sep 2019, 4 weeks
Deliverables: Website prototype, Branding
Team: Self-directed, with feedback from mentor and peers
Role: UX/UI Designer
Tools: Sketch, Illustrator, InVision
01. Discover
Why Digital insurance?
Consumers have embraced—and now fully expect—digital interactions. It’s how they want to do business. Insurers cannot ignore the digital opportunities they face today, but how do they approach digital transformation? It’s not about a new mobile device or the latest app. It’s about using technology in innovative ways to achieve true customer focus across the entire organization. But every insurer is different and digital transformation is a process—not an event. In order to remain competitive, leaders need to rethink existing processes, structures, and methods of customer interaction. They have to digitize the core. Customers are not seeking services; they are looking for solutions. While insurers have traditionally played a more passive role in their customers’ lives, this is changing as companies establish their own platforms and integrate their services into established ones.
Research Goals included determining the pain points users have when shopping for insurance. Identify market trends in online insurance companies, understand how users educate themselves, overall attitude towards this process. What makes shopping for insurance negative/positive, and how we can differentiate ourselves from our competitors.
Competitor analysis & market research
Participating in ecosystems allows insurance players to add value through network effects—for instance, by leveraging allies’ already-established platforms—and to integrate insurance services into other products. For example a fitbit integration for health insurance
Gamification can be a way for insurers to do that; by providing chatbots or mobile tools to set up a policy or file a claim, they can make traditionally cumbersome processes more engaging and integrated into their customers’ lives.
Research findings- The jargon used by insurance companies is confusing, making users lose trust and become frustrated with the process, each user has a diverse set of needs for their insurance package. Finding the best option is overwhelming.
“There are new digital players in the insurance sector. These so-called “insurtechs,” technology-led companies that enter the insurance sector, are taking advantage of new technologies to provide coverage to a more digitally savvy customer base.”
EMPATHY MAP
02. Define
User needs and pain points
Users needed transparent information which was easy to process, for the process to be streamlined and online- and easily accessible with timely reminders to replace agents along with good customer service - with support available whenever needed, as currently they talk to their agent over phone- making it fast. 75% acknowledging the benefits of being able to talk to a real person in the event of a claim. Users appreciated clearly prices and coverage information along with added features. It was important to be able to compare plans and rates and the reputation of the company was important to some. If they feel like they are getting a good value, they didn’t try looking for more options and didn’t do much research.
The pain points identified were that insurance websites used technical jargon, lacked transparency and overwhelmed the user with information. Other experience issues identified were insufficiency of customer service availability, websites were not as helpful as agents for understanding the process, lacked timely communication, quick quotes didn’t seem as trustworthy, and filing a claim was confusing.
persona development
Sketching quick sequential storyboards help generate ideas quickly and help us think about our users’ journey and the problems they face. I used my persona to illustrate a possible journey. Based on user patterns and issues found, I was able to determine a roll-out plan and define the minimum viable product (MVP) as well as future enhancements.
To wrap up the research phase, I needed to make findings actionable. Based on the project goals I developed a roll out plan. The plan included features with a detailed description and research supporting why I was implementing them.
BUSINEss & USEr GOALS
03. Ideate
PRODUCT FEATURE roadmap
The empathise stage helped identify the framework to define the project goals which helped strike a balance between business, user and technical goals. This step brought clarity and cohesiveness in the design process and helped connect the research to the process of design.
I used the users’ needs, project goals and my secondary & market research to identify features to include in my site. Segregated by priority into - Must have, nice to have, delightful, and can come later categories. It was important to outline the highest priority features in a product feature roadmap. This helped me ensure that no feature was forgotten.
Information Architecture
I Worked on a diagram with User and business goals along with other technical considerations to help make decisions. A card sorting exercise was carried out to see how the site map, categories, and tags should be organised.
I narrowed down on my sketches and created a low fidelity prototype to begin usability testing. This proved to be extremely valuable as based on this prototype I could quickly make changes and understand how my website would function and identified certain gaps in the flow.
Card Sorts - Open & Closed Sort - Since I didn’t get much results from an open sort I conducted a closed card sort with 9 participants within the age range of 27-38 years old. The closed card sort yielded better, more helpful results
The other types of insurance were grouped similarly, but clusters were less distinct because of some disagreement. Cards that caused disagreement could likely belong in multiple categories. Users most likely had different understandings of what the lesser known types of insurance were.
Site Map
I built a site map to show a high level relationship between the content of my site. I started with a homepage. I used my card sorting results to categorise the types of insurance based on majority agreement to create top navigation.
Task Flow
The task of selecting a particular type of insurance and buying it, was the most important one and this task flow helped outline all the elements involved in the process.
USER FLOW
The User Flow helped me understand the alternative user flows that have to be achieved within the design. Every user interacts differently with the website and this flow helped identify the different paths or navigation that the user might take and to design for those.
04. Prototype
HIGH FIDELITY WIREFRAMES
Taking the strongest components from my sketches. I determined the basic layout of each screens & digitized the wireframes. During this process, I made decisions on the organization of the information provided and how that visual hierarchy would be presented.
USER INTERFACE DESIGN
Prototype
After creating a prototype on InVision - I tested the product out which helped me identify certain gaps in the design. The testing involved 4 participants within the age range of 26-56.
05. Test
I put together a prototype to test and find out if the design has any usability issues. Although the prototype had limited functionality, test participants would be able to grasp the structure of each screen and identify any issues that might impact the user experience.
USABLILITY TESTING
AFFINITY MAPPING
The insights from the testing were identified in an Affinity Map and accordingly, recommendations were incorporated based on priority and changes were made accordingly in navigation and other areas.
