How can we help our customers better protect what's important.

The Challenge

Keeping all your policies in one place using an application was an idea that came from the senior leadership team and wanted to validate the concept. The product team did a lot of research, and my task was to plan, design, prototype, and test the idea to understand the desirability of the feature set identified. 

I had four weeks to carry out the research to validate or invalidate the following hypothesis. 

"We believe that showing, protecting and supporting consumer's high-value items will enable them to feel empowered and more informed to make better decisions. Having a direct touchpoint into the consumers home and insurance lifecycle will increase retention and open a new channel for acquisition."

Concept Design

When I join a project, the first step is to review all the research and decisions beforehand. Studying this helps me understand where this problem has come from and gives me a chance to ask any questions before creating solutions to those problems identified.

Due to all the research and work documented on Miro, this was a relatively simple process. I first worked with the product manager on the project to create the key user flows; Once we defined the initial flows, we started a co-design workshop, where we reviewed the flows and started to make quick wireframes and concepts that map against those flows. Due to joining the project late, I needed to involve all the team to support any knowledge gaps.‍

Positioning the product

Now we had had many concepts that have been defined and prioritised; We now had to think about how we could position this product to potential customers to aid with our content creation and branding for the site. 

So we started with defining the problem based on our research.

The problem 

Insurance is complicated. For many of us, it's a necessary evil - we arrange it as quickly as possible and then put it to the back of our minds. The thought of making a claim or checking whether a new purchase is covered by existing insurance policies makes us pull the duvet over our heads.

People perceive the value of their home contents at about half of the actual value. We buy insurance once a year (or less if it auto-renews), but situations change frequently, and it's important that policies reflect our circumstances; 1 in 5 people have claims rejected for not having the proper coverage.

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The solution

HUB is a new app that collects all of your insurance policies, big-ticket purchases and warranties in one place.

So that:

• When it comes to making a claim, you know exactly where to find your policies 
• When your circumstances change, HUB will tell you the actions you need to take to ensure your policies are up to date 
• You can easily spot any overlaps in coverage and cancel them to save money 
• You can easily spot any gaps in coverage (reflected by your 'protection score') and can take action - get quotes to cover them - right away (through GoCo integration)
• You are alerted when warranties run out and can ensure that those items are insured 
• When you make a big purchase, you can see straight away whether an existing policy covers it or if it needs additional policy and can get quotes and arrange cover right away (through GoCo integration)
• When policies expire, when premiums go up, or when a better deal comes along, you are alerted and can quickly check for competitor quotes (connected to GoCo) and switch. 
  

With this in mind, this helped position our copy and style for the Landing page test. 

Prototype & Test

The landing page 

The team wanted to gauge desirability for the product using a landing page test whilst also utilising the customers who sign up for "early access" as participants for our user research on the product. 

I created, designed, & developed the web page with two different types of content and positioned the app slightly differently; I also created Facebook Ads that would direct people to the landing page and register their interest. 

The app prototype

Before work was carried out on the prototype, I decided to write a high-level learning plan to identify the research goals and plan what needed to be prototyped to get the most helpful insight.

Here's a link to view the plan.

I then prototyped the solution and worked with the customer research manager to recruit users. 

The Outcome

The outcome of this project was that we decided to shelve Hub as an app proposition due to feedback from our research saying that they were not likely to engage with the application, but also very low numbers of engagement on our landing page tests. However, they still found utility in the application, so we've decided to utilise those learnings to see how we can improve our web platform services.

Here is a link to the research playback

Project Takeaways & Reflection

I found this project quite difficult to work with due to the constraint of not using any open banking facilities and personal finance management. I felt that this feature would have been key in the customer's regular engagement with the application and open oppurtunity to other capabilities in the future.

Insurance is a small aspect of people's financial management. The majority see it as a "grudge purchase, " limiting the functionality to just insurance management limit's value.

To appreicate the solution, you must proritise the problem and in this case the problem managing insurance is not priortised.