COVERED BY SAGE

Covered by Sage is an American startup that was started in the year 2018.
It is a technology-driven insurance brokerage company that combines cutting-edge tech and modern consumerism with old-fashioned human-touch. The New York City-based startup secured a $6 million seed funding round to help transform the role of independent retail agents in today’s insurance ecosystem. The company recently raised six million as seed capital.

Goal

Creating a Business to Customer platform for Insurance buyers that are aligned with the values of Covered by Sage

My Role

Senior Product Designer

(Defining Scope with PM ,Research, Ideation, Information Architecture, User Flows, Creating the Design System, Iterations for Visual design, UI and GUI, Interaction design, User Testing, Stakeholder management, Workshop facilitation)

Tools

Figma/ Adobe XD

Miro

Project Team

intially 3 designers and then solo ,

1 project manager

Due to non disclosure agreement with the company I have intentionally removed parts of information from this case study

The Challenge

For most people insurance and insurance buying in America is a confusing space , there are so many of them and so many options to choose from. What is ideal ? What is relevant? What is covered and what is not ? Understanding and navigating all of this is a tall task

How can we help make buying and managing insurance easier for people?

The other challenge was being able to finish a collaborative project during the time of the pandemic when working remotely ( everyone including the team) for the first time

The Outcome

A delightful insurance aggregator / buying platform that makes information palatable, the quoting process simpler and managing policies less of a hassel.

Methodology

Requirements Gathering

Covered by Sage was still at its nascent stage as a company. It had quite recently build an agent platform ( a B to B platform that Insurance
Agents associated with the company would use inroder to document and register their clients to the company database. ) The platform was being tested out in the market .

At present, the company was seeking to build a B to C platform , (insured platform). This platform had to cater to insurance buyers who were digital natives or tech savvy . They would be around the ages of early twenties to mid thirties . For clarity , a stake holder meeting was organised where goals, time lines and role assignments were clarified.

The main goal of the project was to create a testable version of the platform that like the agent platform would go through a test run.
This would also be vital in garnering another funding round for this new company that was attempting to break into the insurance market.

Scope

Based on the requirements I defined the scope of the project along with my Project Manager , this would give clarity to the design and dev team as to more specifics of the project. The scope definition was done via a miro board and a teams call with the entire team involved in the intial process and then
refined individually by me. To put it briefly :

Scope
Definition

To build a first MVP of the insured platform that is market ready and investor funding round ready.

Acceptance
Criteria

Users must of able to onboard without any hassels

Users must be able to manage their policies, accounts, certificates

Users must be able to get quotes quickly and easily for two insurances auto and home.

Users must be able to make clear distinctions between their business and personal insurances

Deliverables

Research data documented

High fideltiy mocked up

(dev ready)

Design system for the insured

Scope
Objective

The platform must highlight the values of COVERED by SAGE

It must be user approved.

It must be accessible via web and mobile

While this process would have other wise been a competitor analysis , i also used the learnings from these platforms to broaden my knowledge about how insurance platforms work since this was a new domain for me. Utilizing my previous knowledge from working in Experience design, i also made copious notes of what are the UX strengths and weakness of these platforms,( a UX audit ) were, and potentional innovation areas that i could later if required implement in the platform we were creating. All of this was systematically documented in an excel sheet and also miro. I also went through case studies and forums to understand user behaviours and problems.

Simultaneous I conducted stakeholder interviews with the head of the company , my product manager and the product manager of the agent platform who were all very familiar with the market and hence were able to provide key insights.
I was however unable to obtain direct one one one interviews from potential users due to the COVID 19 situtation another coordination difficulties that were yet to be resolved for remote working / interaction situation . I should mention at this point that my core team was also spread apart , I was working from India, my other designers were spread in Nepal and the US, the Product manger and the Head of the Company was in the US and my Design Head was in Nepal.

While this seems normal now, at the time while the pandemic was still its its peak, there were still glitches in the way teams would and could work.

Synthesis

Key Insights :

Ambigious

People are required to take a bundle of insurances based on their assets etc and they more often then not have no idea which ones are worth their money. Understanding insurances( what each of them are , which ones are directly relevant and which ones provide more value ) is complicated and users don't have time to go through each of them

Trust

Users are unsure of who they are to trust when availing for insurances, especially on online platforms. This is important as users usually give out vital information during the purchase process which is risky.

Tedious

Platforms are usually tedious and most users quit after the first few sections of the registration process and don't even register. They then rely on friends or agents to find them the right insurances.

Problem Understanding

My secondary research comprised of mainly understanding how other existing american insurance platforms currently work. I also extensively along with my team of 2 other designers looked in to social trends and any specific future trends that would influence the insurance buying market.

fig: A quick list of some platforms that i looked into during the research phase

For clarity in the ideation process i made a persona based on the research.

Design Strategy

With the clarity of the scope of the project and a fairly decent understand of problems that users face.
I first started with the question :

WHAT IS THE PLATFORM LIKE RIGHT NOW ?

Since this was a new project and no such platform existed my reference was the user flows that other competitors already had.

These formed the foundation of what existed currently.

In addition , there were inputs from experts within the Covered by Sage team , especially my PM who had extensive knowledge about the field
The strategy here was to understand from the PM and the company what they thought an ideal flow for the user would be. I then mapped out this flow on a miro board while engaging with my PM throughout the entire process.

WHAT COULD THE PLATFORM BE ?

Based on the user needs that I uncovered from the expert interviews and through self reflection of my own and my team members experiences with insurance platforms my next step was to see what possible interventions could be used to improve these flows based on my UX knowledge and also knowledge from the UX designers of the agent facing platform through a small workshop.

A low fidelity prototype would then be built which would be first user tested.

Since this was a new product it was imperative to get some first impressions from people who would be potential users , thus i began initiating discussions with the product and design manager for possible user tests. My reasons were clear, this was a new platform and not legacy design. External feedback was important. The outcome of this discussion was that we were able to obtain 5 possible users who were willing to give their time. Since online tools for interaction were fairly new , initial telephonic conversations had to be made to explain to them how zoom really works and how to use the tool.
With the pandemic still in full swing while there were originally 3 designers working on this , the work finally was left for me to alone as resources needed to be diversified for the startup.

Experience Design Principles

Defined based on Insights

Easy to Use

Users must be able to easily navigate, understand and use the platform.

UX techniques like progressive disclosure, clear hierchary etc. should be used without sacrificing functionality and usability

Dependable

Users must be able to have clarity of information provided in the platform.

The platform must have a consistent experience through out and give them a

sense of empowerment and control

Delight

Users must be able to have a positive emotional connection with the platform. It must feel welcoming , warm and uncomplicated.

Building

Building comprised of creating the basic userflows followed by ideations on simplification, delight and trust and then building the low fidelity protoype ready for testing.

fig: User flows

vid: Quoting flow Commercial Line

vid: Managing Policies Personal Line

vid: Managing Policies Commercial Line

vid: Quotes and Policies Dashboard VIews

vid: Claims and Policies

Testing

These flows were tested with 5 insurance buyers/ potential customers and their responses were documented .

Interviews were conducted via zoom. Participants were sent a link of the low fidelity prototype.

The purpose of the tests was to understand if users were able to accomplish their tasks i.e.:

: were the users able to successfully get quotes?

: were they able to onboard / sign up successfully ?

: were they able to find information about their insurances correctly ?

: were they able manage policies ?

Task Based Testing : To test this i created task scenarios for the users where users were able to interact and experience the flows themselves.

Observations were noted based on:

: whether they were able to achieve the task

:how quickly they were able to achieve it

: what were the errors if any

As part of this Moderated Testing this was followed by a short semi structured interview about their views, their likes , dislikes and irritants. These were meticulously documented in a miro board, the interviews were synthesised via affinity mapping.

fig: Miro page documentation of user testing

While 5 participants is too small a sample size to gather quantitative data , i still gathered insights to measure which UX improvements to pioritise on. Please. note that the values here in other situations would not be enough since only 5 people were part of the testing while in actuality a minimum of 20 participants would be required for a more accurate quantitative analysis.

Task Success Rate

Sign up flow: All participants were able to complete this task with ease , how ever there were points where 1 user showed hesitation to complete and would skip to go to the landing page. There were also a list of insurances that they had no idea what they were about and said that information about each of them would be helpful . Task success rate : 80%

As a future quant. research I would look at drop of rates and acquire data from funnel charts to analyse drop off points.

Quoting Flow : All users completed the quoting flow. They found the questions simplified and were able to assess how long the flow was via the steps and progress bar. They found it helpful that it was also a mobile experience .

Task success rate was 100% ( but only with 5 users)

Manage policies flow: Users found this flow simple and felt that they could have a quick access to all their policies, all five participants were able to complete it .

Task success rate: 100% ( out of 5 users)

Error Rate

Sign up flow: As 2 users abadoned hte signup flow with the intention of completing it later when needed the error rate : 20 % ( out of 5 users)

Quoting Flow : 2 users were not able to understand the relevancy of the questions.

the error rate here is : 40% ( out of 5 users )

Manage policies flow: From the five errors noone had any issues with this flow and they made no mistakes.

Time on task

Quoting Flow : For three users it took 5 minutes ( approx) to complete the task , 2 users took longer. Both had doubts about whether the questions asked were really relevant to them and stopped to inquire more before proceeding to the next steps.

Manage policies flow: All users were able

to finish the task in under 5 minutes.

I built a second round of iterations based on the user testing that went through another round of testing.

With improved feedback it was time to work on the Visual and Interaction Design.

Some of the improvements were :

1. provide info icons on questions so that users can tap and get information about the relevancy of those questions

2. Allow for users to drop off and return back to complete the remaining flow when ever they wanted.

3. Provide assurances about data privacy.

Visual and Interaction Design

After another round of interation on the low fidelity based on the User/ Usablitiy testing.

I began the process for creating the high fidelity.

Since the insured was a customer facing platform using the same design system as the Agent facing platform was restricting. Hence while some components from the platform was refurbished using the experience design principles of of delight and trust i began exploring some visual and interaction design which would later inform the hi fidelity and also the design system or sticker sheet for the Insured platform.

Also by this point the design team size had reduced from 3 members to just being one solo designer , one of the team mates left the team while the other was shifted to another project requirement.

Below are some of the many iterations I made.

vid: Sign up flow

vid: Quoting flow Personal Line

Design System

The first task I did was to audit the existing design system followed by looking at other design systems.

1. Auditing the existing design system.

Auditing the existing design system meant looking at all the existing components, looking into how the design system functions in the agent platform flows , cross checking how the system would accommodate the new Insured product flow.

2. Looking at other design systems

Design systems that were looked at were Atlassian, Shopify , Air B n B and also insurance platforms Thimble and Embroker. After making copious notes a presentation was created and a meeting with the stakeholders was organised .

Based on their feedback I started making a list of all the components that required changes.

Inorder to stick to the Covered by Sage brand , the brand colors were the most visually distinct aspect ,the shades of red as seen in the logo , and the deep blue as seen on other collaterals really stood out and it was around these colors that the brand identity and the design system was built.

The Product

Below is a glimpse of the product before the final review and handing it to dev.

Please note that these are all Adobe XD and Figma file prototypes that i built and and there might be issues/ glitches, with the prototype

( interaction glitches , a few inconsistencies in text and some minor breakages in the UI ) .

These glitches were fixed before handing it over to the dev team .

SIGN IN FLOW : System sends codes to the user's connected email id or password instead of entering password for better security of the user's account.

QUOTING FLOWS: the other entry point to the platform is when users know exaclty what they want , say for example they own a house or a car , and that needs to be insured, in such a case a firs time user can directly enter the platform via the quoting flows , an account is automatically created in such a case.

When users had completed a quoting flow and hence in turn signed up to the platform . While progress bars are used to effectively help users understand the number of steps that were needed to finish a quoting flow . Interaction design helped in making the question answer flow less cumbersome when they could not be shortened. The data that the customer entered to get a quote for one insurance was used to help them finish the form for another insurance to avoid redundant questions , all of which are explicitly mentioned to the user.

At the end of each quoting flow, the system generates a minimum of three quotes from three different insurance providers so that they can quickly compare the pros and cons of each of them before making a decision.

An agent is also always on the line to help incase of any doubts or confusions.

SIGN UP FLOW: has two entry points either via Personal or Business Insurance depending on which one the user is in need of or wants to create an account for. While the first time user starts with one account, the user can later add as many accounts if they have multiple businesses which are all linked and easy accessible to them.

Depending on the Insurance relevant questions are asked by the system that all adds up to building a risk profile for the user.

The Risk Profile is crucial in determining the right insurance, the right quotes and for building trust with insurance buyers via transparency . This risk profile also helps in providing better recommendations for the user.

Since the Sign up flow is quite long, the UX interventions added here are progress bars, more interactivity, simplified questions in the form filling and the ability to drop off anytime and complete the rest later when ever the user wanted.

Two ideas of the for the web version that i created for A/B testing . While one had a more visual progress indicator for the risk profile , the second version gives an overview of what relevant steps the user had to complete to finish the risk profile, in this second version the user can also quickly scan through what they have entered in those steps( a summary of sorts ) without the hassel of constantly clicking the back button and disrupting the user mental model . Another important aspect was to also figure out the kind of text or the tone of the text that we were adding to the experience especially to gain trust and credibility with the users.

Based on the A/B testing the second version was selected .

First Version

Second Version

Home Quoting Flow

Auto Quoting Flow

Quote Proposal

A Quote proposal is generated by the system once the user finishes the quoting flow.

Key aspects of the quote proposal was that it provided a detailed view of the insurance and allowed users to also compare the quotes so that they were able to make a better decision on the insurance they wanted to buy. This detailed Quote Proposal provided transparency between the company and the potential buyer.This artefact also allowed for relationship building between our company and the potential buyer via connecting them to an insurance agent incase they needed further assistance for both inbound and well as outbound leads.

I designed a web version ( where a link would be sent to the user's inbox email ) and a pdf version of the proposals.

MANAGING POLICIES : Once users had obtained a relevant quote, they would be able to manage their policies by simply signing in to the platform, the system would allow users to add any new policies that they might have previously purchased to this repository. They would also be reminded of any policy that was near expiration date so that they would take further actions on the same, a quick and easy way to track their policies. Further more email reminders would be sent to the user when such a situation would occur.

Learnings

The reason why i put this project up was because i really think I had valuable learnings begin the first remote working job that i had.

1. I really understood the value of retrospectives and in virtual collaborative teams really vocalising what is working and not working via a team retrospective is a

great method.

2. Embracing the ambiguity and trusting the process works.

3. Covid 19 affected everyone's perpective on life and priorities I learnt to work with what I had and be able to quickly think on my feet during major design obstacles

Other Projects

Check out other projects below:

Outcome

Some key outcomes are:

1. The goal of the project was the create a platform that would help users navigate through insurance buying easily while also providing them the right

insurance. Based on this the scope and the acceptance criteria were defined. The objectives of the design based on this were achieved .

However to understand if this design is really user approved would require time to observe the conversion rates . I would like to add here that based on the

survey with 10 participants the NPS was +80.

2. Based on the feedback and responses it was clear that user engagement on the platform in comparison to its competitors was better. Users found the

platform much more simplified , easier to navigate and with reduced insurance jargon.

3. The company was able to achieve with my contribution its target of raising its second round of funding that year ($42.9 million). The company would later

change its name and become Renegade Insurance