The Path
Pembridge Insurance, backed by Allstate Insurance Company of Canada, provides home and automobile insurance to Canadians through a network of select insurance brokers. They were looking to move their broker portal off a legacy back-end and finally give it a user interface.
Agency
OnX & Architech
Role
Sr. UI/UX Designer
Client
Allstate Insurance
Year
2019 - 2020
Prior to ‘The Path’, brokers who used Pembridge needed to process claims through a DOS like interface. As painstaking as that sounds, the aging tool was favourited among the brokers, for its speed and ability to operate using just the number pad. As a new generation of brokers came into the insurance industry, their primary tool needed to follow suit. The challenge we faced was to appeal to a younger user, without alienating the efficient experience that brokers came to appreciate.
Objectives
Flesh out the entire user flow for an automotive policy. Including policy look-up, driver profile, vehicle profile, driver editing, vehicle editing and change logs.
Understand working habits and pain-points of claims brokers who would use the tool.
Explore competition and help define our competitive edge.
Test UI concepts with brokers with prototypes.
Explore different visual approaches for the tool, and help guide the new brand.
Mock-up all pages and scenarios.
Establish a brand new design system.
Future proof the entire platform to handle continued scale as it grows into home and life.
Understanding Brokers
Understanding the Broker User
By shadowing a vast swath brokers, young and old, we better understood how they use the incumbant tool, as well as competitor tools. Seeking behavioural patterns and probing further with questions on their day-to-day operations. Diving into likes, dislikes and the changing landscape.
One of the most surprising insights was the aversion brokers had towards some of the competitors who recently re-designed their portals. Despite leaning on all the best practices from typical modern interfaces, the new designs proved difficult to use. They required users to rely heavily their mouse or trackpad, negatively impacting the time it took to processes a change. The users preference, was to have one hand on the number pad, and the other on ‘tab’ and all necessary customer information visible.
Prototyping a monster
Since majority of the key interactions meant typing and inputting data, we wanted testers to truly feel the new experience to the best of our ability. Stretching our skills in AxureRP, we built a comprehensive lo-fi prototype that Brokers could truly feel the new experience. Not only by inputting data, but integrating logic that would mimic the back-end.
Visual Exploration & Implementation
Exploring three different look and feels, then compilling a comprehensive design system with all the needed UI, based on the prototypes. Then mocking up all screens in high-fidelity and working closely with devleopers in Northern Ireland for hand-off and design QA.
“Yippppppppppppppppppppppppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. I am DELLIGHTED!!!”
— Product Owner form Allstate Northern Ireland on me returning to their project.