Simplifying the world of insurance
Client: Kaus
UX/UI DESIGNER | RESEARCHER
INTERVIEWING | PERSONA DEVELOPMENT | WIREFRAMES | BRANDING | UI | PROTOTYPING | USER TESTING
Kaus is an established insurance company that is expanding their business model from exclusively B2B model to include direct-to-consumer sales.
While Kaus is an established insurance company, they lacked an online presence for their DTC business. As a result, there was a gap in their consumer base for a younger demographic. I was tasked with designing a DTC responsive site that catered to a younger audience.
Understanding the world of insurance
I started with extensive secondary research as I was unfamiliar with the world of insurance and the jargon used. Once I felt I understood the basics of insurance I then conducted competitive analysis of insurance companies that had a DTC online business. I chose 5 well known companies across various fields within insurance. I studied their information architecture to see what was the norm for presenting insurance but also, what could be improved upon.
How might we simplify the insurance buying process and make it easy for customers to understand the policies available?
Balancing user and business goals
After understanding the user base, I needed to balance that with the business needs. Ultimately the goals became:
Simplify the insurance buying process.
Allow customers to easily browse and understand policies provided.
Create a modern brand that would appeal to a younger demographic.
Getting into the mind of the target demographic
From the 1:1 interviews, I found that insurance buyers are often befuddled by the policies they have bought. They enter it with trepidation and expecting to be confused and the experience often meets that. They are confused by the plans, terminology and paperwork that is needed to keep up to date with their plans.
Designing a modern site that appeals to a younger demographic.
The visual design and branding needed to align with clients vision whilst displaying a sense of trustworthiness that would allow potential customers to feel secure in their purchase of a policy.
Highlighting popular policies
Since users were often perplexed by the policies that companies provided I thought it would be fruitful to have a section dedicated to the explanation of each policy type. This is seen below in the hero image section. The most popular insurance policies (health, car and property) are highlighted but users also have the option to see all policies provided.
Creating a trustworthy brand/identity
After creating the lo-fi wireframes, the brand/identity of the company needed to be created. The visual design needed to reflect the trustworthy, modern and clean image they are striving for.
Testing the process of getting a quote for a policy
To understand the usability and effectiveness of the design choices, I had 4 participants, between the ages of 24 and 57 test the hi-fi prototype. Some notable results:
All users used the “Get a Quote” CTA on the hero image to start their quote process
Confirmation page needed clarity on next steps if an email was not received
Certain aspects/prompts needed explanation for why it was needed and how it was relevant
Users liked the break down of the total quote and how each term was explained
Conclusion
The challenge
The first challenge I encountered was attaining a full enough grasp of the insurance industry to conduct my interviews. I felt that I needed to have a decent idea of the terminologies and concepts in order to have at length and conducive interviews. Following this, it was narrowing the scope of the problem areas that needed to be solved from the research whilst also balancing the needs of the client, based on the brief given.
Potential next steps
If given more time, I would like to test the prototype after some iterations. I would also flesh out the FAQ section with more detail as my research showed that the challenge of understanding insurance as an industry was shared amongst many participants.