www.kevinkeiper.com

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Consultant

EMC Insurance

Aug 2024

Nov 2024

STORY BACKGROUND CONTEXT

The former internal Property and Casualty Insurance underwriting application was a mash-up of incongruous services, external services, and duct-taped UI solutions which needed a thorough update for stability and cohesive goal-based underwriting flows.

PROJECT OPPORTUNITIES

Reduce ‘Time to Quote’ by 25%.

Increase profitability per quote by 25% (depending on line of business).

Increase volume of desirable new business within ‘appetite’ parameters.

Reduce risk of account rejection by improving approval processes.

THE CHALLENGES

Design team still using Sketch not Figma. Poor communication between senior stakeholders. Difficult personality conflicts between team members. Management was pushing an aggressive project deadline which was not reasonable so we had to adjust scope and eliminate essential prep and research. This lowered morale and motivation...

GOALS AT A GLANCE

Reduce quoting times
Revenue per Quote
New client accounts
Risk reduction

-20%
+15%
+25%
-30%

TEAM

Product Director

Senior UX Designer

Heather Schrage

Laura Wilkens

PROJECT TOOLS + SKILLS

Affinity Mapping

Figma

Interactive Prototypes

Journey Maps

Sketch

Qualitative Research

Lucid Chart

DESIGN PLANNING PROCESS

I began by exploring future features with stakeholders in qualitative brainstorming sessions to create affinity maps using LucidChart.

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We discovered performance gaps and identified essential, ‘nice to have’ and ‘blue sky’ features aligned to business KPI goals.

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We classified features pertaining to phases of the underwriting goal path, focusing on achieving measurable outcomes.

I created a ‘happy path’ map of quote goal monetization with a high level process diagram in Figma.

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It was from here that the team remained aligned on the desired UX and business outcomes.

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The previous brainstorming and affinity mapping exercises were synthesized with this flow into a singular wireframing strategy...

I inventoried existing application screens into a Figma site map.

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This ensured stakeholder alignment to strategy by revealing inconsistencies, new features and business goals.

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This revealed hidden complexities and wasteful goal paths, and helped refine flows. This was a prerequisite for the Design Execution Process...

DESIGN EXECUTION PROCESS

Using the previous assets I began to imagine the new future state set of goal oriented workflow wireframes.

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These were specifically aligned to each step of the quote goal path schematic with the intent of meeting all the business requirements.

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All wireframes were constantly in flux and were always evolving based on continuous stakeholder inputs.

The new experience was grounded in a ‘stepper’ which guided users through phases of the goal journey while keeping relevant decision making data available in a left rail.

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We audited all phases of the underwriter task flow to ensure all conditions could be met, and all property values could be collected at key journey moments.

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Once our wireframes were stable we moved to the Final Design phase...

As the engineering team had decided on the Angular Material development framework, it made sense to use the existing and well documented Material Angular UI component set.

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From the previous sets of wireframes, site and journey maps, we refined the designs into a more polished final desktop PAAS tool.

Working with senior stakeholders, the small design team iterated and optimized the final Angular Material design components into the final design.

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The result is a polished v2.0 of an essential business tool, set up to succeed at scale while meeting the project goals.

SUCCESSFUL OUTCOME SUMMARY

PROJECT ASSETS

Overall time to quote process reduction

Average account per-quote revenue gain

Net new insurance agent accounts

Net reduced risk per quote

-20%
+15%
+25%
-30%

Project design file assets