Designing a scalable product for an erratic market

The online insurance market has become increasingly competitive, with many companies investing heavily to drive traffic to their digital sales channels. It is also an unpredictable business sector – changes to legislation and the public opinion of insurance can demand frequent updates which need to be addressed at pace.

We worked with RSA Insurance to undertake the user testing, design and delivery of new quote paths for their 123.ie motor and home insurance products. We needed to create a design that could scale and adapt rapidly to market and business changes.

A key requirement was to accommodate the swift addition, change and removal of steps on the quote paths. We addressed this by breaking down the quote (from a single page) to a series of individual steps. Each step groups relevant questions, allowing users to move through the quote process quickly without being overwhelmed by the number of questions being posed at any one time.

Another challenge identified was the need to allow the quote paths to converge in the future. This allows for the bundling of motor and home quotes to encourage customers to purchase multiple 123.ie insurance products in a seamless way.

Interviews were conducted online with insurance holders regarding the existing quote flows. Analysis of these sessions revealed numerous areas for improvement. Our recommendations were shaped into a prioritisation matrix to determine the feasability, viability and desirability of the proposed features.

Low-fidelity prototypes were created based on these findings, which were again tested with end users for refinement-focused feedback. This user-centred design process continued with high-fidelity screen designs later being tested with users in a final round of feedback-gathering, resulting in screen designs ready for production.

Throughout the process, our findings and designs were continuously pitched to internal stakeholders for feedback and approval, ensuring that each change was aligned with company objectives.

INSURANCE CLAIMS & CAR TYPE QUESTIONS

We leveraged the RSA design system Iceberg to create the UI screens. These were created using a mixture of approved 123.ie branded components and, where necessary, new components for specific use cases. New components were fed back for incorporation into the design system to ensure consistency going forward.

COVERAGE SCREENS

At each stage of user testing, we took a data-centred approach to monitor product performance. We measured quote completion times, error rates and the users’ overall impression of how easy the product felt to use to determine the success of the proposed designs. Using a mixture of existing product data analytics as a baseline, the multiple rounds of user testing allowed us to gauge what proposed design solutions were working, and which needed further attention.

In addition, close contact with the engineering team ensured that the new quote flows would be able to scale and flex in the production environment, creating the malleable product that the business needed.

Finally, new methods of data gathering were added into the resulting quote paths during build. This improved the automated data gathering that was needed to inform future iterations of the quote paths.