The Situation
My innovation team was investigating problems in the homeowner space with the goal of creating products that would meet user needs and connect with new customers in the home owner insurance space. Following the design process and conducting market research and focus groups, we hit upon real needs in the marketplace and shipped several web apps to test those ideas in the marketplace.
My Role
Lead UX Designer responsible for research, leading workshops, ideating, branding, user interface design, presenting to stakeholders and user testing.
Constraints
- Diverse group of stakeholders who were new to the design thinking process
- Shallow, scrappy technical infrastructure
- Reluctant Claims experts
What I Did
Intentionally guiding our Travelers business partners through the Design Thinking process, my UX Research teammate and I collaborated with the Claim business and dscout, a user research company based in Chicago, to uncover pain points in the home ownership space. We watched a number of users go on “missions” to figure out repair projects within their homes: a broken screen door, clogged disposal, malfunctioning refrigerator, chipped dry wall. Most homeowners are not experts in home repair, but many will attempt home repairs with the help of Youtube, or advice from friends.
At the same time, we talked to many people within the company, trying to determine, among the vast wealth of expertise and knowledge, if there were already systems in place that we could use as a kind of knowledge database to help users. I connected with Claims U – an education center within the company that trained new Claims officers assessing home damage and working with homeowners. These were the experts we needed to connect our users to.
Also:
- Built initial, scrappy prototype to test
- Refined design and crafted logo, tag lines, branding
- Designed and ran social media ads to test the concept
- Built marketing materials and promo pages
- Designed final interactive prototype and worked with the dev team to build responsive web app
How I Built Alignment
Getting to know our partners and understanding their concerns, I shared designs often and early with stakeholders and engineering to get feedback and build a send of community and excitement around our vision.
Outcome
- Shipped 6-month beta pilot, reaching 1,500+ registered users
- Connected with those users and served 2600+ text and video chats to solve home repair issues
- Secured several rounds of funding from executive leadership at Travelers and continued support from the Claims team
Reflection
There were a lot of problem-solving opportunities in the midst of launching this app. We were moving very fast and technical challenges were sometimes a hurdle to connecting with users. Troubleshooting software and hardware issues across mobile devices required us to connect with the wider team and get everyone testing, which really helped socialize what we were doing. At the end of the day, even the challenges were opportunities.