Kaus
Background
Kaus is a large, regional-agent insurance company that has been in business for over 30 years. The company sells prepared packages of insurance to individuals and has a competitive low-cost selling point. Kaus has only worked on B2B environments before, but now wants to sell their policies online. Kaus also wants to tap into the younger digital market with the rise of the internet and personal devices.
Objective
Kaus has asked for a responsive website design that is pleasing to use, and a modern, fresh branding and logo. The website should allow customers to browse through all products with easy filtering by relevant data, and lead towards purchasing a package that suits their lifestyle.
Project Details
Tools:
Figma
Duration:
9 weeks
20 hours/week
Role:
Solo UX Researcher & Designer
UI Designer
Phase 1: Research
Research Goals
To uncover why young people buy insurance
To understand the needs, expectations and pain points of younger people looking to buy insurance
To uncover competitor standards and features
To understand the actions taken when looking for insurance (when users need insurance and how users are looking for insurance)
Interviews
I conducted interviews 1-on-1 to obtain first-hand knowledge of the user experience with competitor sites. Shown below, the interviews helped uncover insights about what the participants liked and disliked about the features of these sites, their personal insurance buying stories, their emotions around buying insurance, and their understanding of basic insurance terminology.
Participants
4 Participants
Ages 25-35 years old
6-10/10 technically savvy individuals
Have experience shopping online for insurance
Research Summary
Top 3 wants in an insurance website:
Good customer service and support and chat box
Good navigation and ability to find information easily
Good automation on quotes
Top 3 frustrations in an insurance website:
Time taken away from family when customer service support takes a long time
Terminology is too advanced on site
Not being able to find in-network providers, cost coverages, or insurance cards easily in members accounts
Phase 2: Define
Persona
Insights from research lead to the creation of a persona - Alyssa - whose demographics and information were used as an example throughout the completed prototype. Creating a persona helped envision a target user.
Alyssa is a young millennial and working professional in the education field. Her boyfriend and her just bought a home together and they have one car. On her time off, she enjoys cooking, playing with her dog, eating at new restaurants with her boyfriend and chatting with her family over Zoom.
Card Sort
I used an open card sort to understand the organization of insurance terminology using randomly selected insurance types. Participants were within the target market and comparable demographics as the interview participants. The categorization of the website’s pages and subcategories were structured based off of the insights of the card sort.
Sketches
My initial sketches for the homepage were a combination of the categorizations and expectations that participants expressed in their card sorts. The final homepage was a combination of ideas these sketches. I wanted to showcase key features of the website and have an easily accessible navigation.
Task Flow
To better understand how my persona would proceed to buy insurance, I created a task flow. This helped visualize the main screens of the website better in order to start thinking about the UI elements.
Phase 3: Design
Branding
After defining the user, it was time to create the UI elements. Kaus wanted a fresh and modern logo and branding for their website.
I created a mood board with Pinterest to find inspiration for the aesthetic of the site. I knew I wanted minimalistic images and elements to help evoke more of a playfulness with heavy insurance concepts
Thinking about other insurance company logos, the logo is one of the most recognizable element of the company. If alone, most people could recall the name of the insurance company, if it’s not also attached to a jingle. I wanted the logo to be recognizable as an insurance company but also simple enough to stand alone. The final logo was an exploration with term “umbrella” insurance policies, or all-encompassing insurance policies and the symbol of a home for security
I created a style tile to help guide me through designing the website. The elements in the style tile remained the same through the completion of the prototype
Lo-Fi Wireframes
Because there was so much information to consider, creating the lo-fi wireframes took a lot longer than expected. Making sure there was enough whitespace between information cards and balancing the out icons and rounded shapes was a challenge. I originally had center-alignment for the text, but I changed it to left-alignment to become more scannable.
Responsive Design
I created responsive screens for the homepage to showcase how the website could look on a tablet and mobile device. The challenge was to shrink the icons and images to fit the smaller screen sizes, and also maintain the whitespace between elements.
The homepage text on the website and tablet are in left-alignment for scanning through the information quickly. However, I chose to center-align the mobile text and images to make the information fit into its own cards and flow down the page nicely.
Phase 4: Test
Usability Test
I performed a usability test on the initial prototype to uncover the successes, weaknesses, pain points and emotions around the design. Some of the key insights of the test were:
3/4 participants did not make it to the car insurance product page and stopped at Products section
4/4 participants thought the navigation tabs could be more visible
2/4 participants expected to see a breakdown of the quoted price [The quoted price page in the initial prototype had more information about the customer rather than seeing what the insurance coverage would be]
Main Revisions
“Products” page: The Products page was revised to lead users to the product information quicker and with more ease
Navigation size: The navigation was increased in size for better visibility
“Quoted Price” page: The Quoted Price page was revised to show the breakdown of the price clearly
Takeaways
This project was challenging because it contained a difficult e-commerce structure with lots of information to be presented. I learned how to sort through the information architecture and use the top insights of research to move forward with defining and designing the UI.
In addition, the usability testing helped bring forward design and user flow problems that were overlooked in the sketch and wireframe stages. Overall, the project process proved to be a very iterative one.
Interested in hearing more? See my contact information in the footer below!