Project Overview

Insurance for everyday people

Juno Insurance is a long-standing and well-established insurer in Canada. Traditionally, Juno has obtained clients via regional agents. With the industry changing dramatically to meet expectations of younger owners, Juno needs to cut the middleman and connect to their customers directly. They’re a little behind in the game, so it’s of utmost importance that their online service is not only as streamlined as it can be, but that it competes with the biggest Insurers in the game. 

Juno’s main USP is that they can offer more affordable packages to their customers since their insurance is pre-packaged. Especially since Juno is aiming to attract the younger generation, they wants to keep their package pricing low, and therefore optimize packages that will benefit the greatest number of people with similar situations. Additionally, Juno offers a wide range of products to meet the needs of its diverse clientele, including auto insurance, home insurance, travel insurance, and more. 

Since Insurance is a complex and intimidating process, Juno’s main priority is to simplify it. Juno believes insurance should feel like a relief, not an extra stress when dealing with accidents and unprecedented events. Their insurance process needs to reflect this belief, by making sure that their insurance process is informed first and foremost by its users. 

Along with an online service design, Juno will also be undergoing a rebranding to match. With a similar goal of attracting a younger target group, branding needs to feel welcoming and fresh.

Problem Statement

Great design is not about finding the right answers, but rather, on asking the right questions. The two problem statements I proposed are:

How Might We design an online insurance service that makes the process of getting insured hassle-free and streamlined? 

Approach: Creating an instant quote generator that provides users the most pressing information immediately 

How Might We increase trust between Juno and users getting insurance?

Approach: By focusing on creating a great customer experience, free of confusion, and centred on giving value and guidance

Project Vision

“To reimagine the insurance process. Juno wants to make getting insured a streamlined process, that is inviting to new potential customers, and also builds trust between them and current customers”

Phases

First things, first - the design process! It is pretty much always a mistake to go off our first assumptions when designing solutions. That’s where a thorough design process makes all the difference between good and great design. These phases help us keep our approaches and decisions checked at several points along the journey.

Project KPI

It’s not enough to hope that our decisions are valid. We have to be able to measure their impact. Therefore, it’s essential that we think about how we’re going to measure Juno’s success. Regarding Juno’s current challenges, the most important Key Performance Indicators (KPI) will be: 

• Quote to Account Conversion - the most obvious indicator for success will be seeing the % of users going from getting an instant quote to deciding to purchase insurance with Juno 

• Customer Satisfaction - as important as the number of transactions are, in an industry like insurance, qualitative indicators are just as important. Insurance serves a need (sometimes even an obligation) rather than a desire, so t’s crucial that we see how satisfied (or unsatisfied) customers are 

Project Scope

The scope of this project will be user and industry research, user experience design, prototyping and usability testing. Deliverables will include a responsive website and branding.

Phase 1 | Empathize

In this phase of the process, we’ll put aside any and all of our assumptions about the problems and challenges that might exist in the insurance process. Empathizing is all about listening - the best way to do that in this case is research - thorough, and unbiased-as-possible research. 

I conducted research both to understand the market as it is today in Canada, as well as research on how people experience insurance from a user perspective. To unveil the potential areas of opportunity we may overlook, I chose research methodologies that might best inform us on the current needs we should be focusing on. 

Secondary Research

Insurance is complex and confusing so let’s dissect it! First, we need to identify what questions we should know the answers to. What do insurance packages look like currently? How does the industry in Canada work currently? What are the anticipated changes to come? What are users' biggest concerns when it comes to purchasing insurance? Understanding the market to the best of our ability will also allow us to begin to understand the users we are serving.

On our journey to discovering the answers to our questions, here are my key findings:

Here is a full report on my secondary research findings for your reference

Competitive Analysis

Now that we have some preliminary information on how the insurance market looks like in Canada, we need to understand where Juno sits in the industry. The best way to do this is to look at what our competitors are doing, and how we compare. I searched the top insurers in Canada, and they were, respectively: Intact, Aviva, Desjardins, TD Insurance, and Co-operators. 

I evaluated the features that were available on each to understand on a quantitative level, what is offered on each. This also gives us an insight on what the biggest players in the market deem the most important, what is deemed less important, and where we might be able to step in and provide more value.

User Interviews and SME (Subject Matter Expert Interviews)

The next step of my research was recruiting interview participants. Secondary research and competitive analysis gave us plenty of quantitative information - but to address the challenge of fostering great customer satisfaction, speaking directly to users and to subject matter experts can help us understand the things that numbers and figures can’t give us. 

The first round of interviews were with users who had experience with the current process of getting insured. I wanted to understand the journey that users might expect to take in finding the best policy for them, their experiences with past and/or current online insurance services, and their motivations in finding insurance packages. 

As Juno wants to attract a younger generation, I aimed to find users who were in their mid 20s - mid 30s. However, I also wanted to account for edge cases, and so, made a point to keep the ages, locations, professions and genders among participants as diverse as possible. Here are the demographics of my research participants:

As some information from these user interviews is sensitive, my folder of interview notes is private. Please request access if you’d like to see my full interview reports.

The second round of interview, I conducted Subject Matter Expert (SME) Interviews. I interviewed 2 individuals who worked in the industry. The first participant was in her late 20s, and was working as an Auto Claims Adjuster. The second participant was in her mid 50s and had been working as an Insurance Analyst for 9 years. 

Again, since some information from these SME interviews is sensitive, my folder of interview notes is private. Please request access if you’d like to see my full interview reports.

Some of my main findings from these interviews were:

• Proactivity | Insurance agents believe users can be proactive via knowing their rights 

• User Insights | There are more claims overall from inner-city residents than in suburbs. There has also been a rise in injury and medical services being requested

• Overall Process | Talking to an agent over the phone primarily for everything from quotes to claims is still the norm 

• High-level Goals | Users want to feel taken care of. They want to be financially comfortable while meeting their lifestyle desires 

• Archetypes | From the 6 interviews conducted, 3 archetypes stood out: Budgeters, Cautious Researchers, First-time Owners

• Affinity Diagram | The common themes among participant interview answers were: brand comparison, service experience, and risk assessment 

• Expertise | Knowledge on insurance varies widely across genders and ages, but overall, insurance knowledge is pretty low 

• Pains | Sometimes users deal with poor customer service. Most feel the process overall, however, is straight-forward. Price is the main pain point

• Expectations | Quotes need to be received within a day, and it shouldn’t take longer than that to set up monthly payments

After conducting secondary research, competitive analysis, user and SME interviews, it’s time to find the common themes and highlight them.

Here is a full summary of my research findings

Informed by our methodologies, we can now start to speculate 1. Who we are designing 2. What their needs are and 3. How we can meet those needs. 

Creating a User Persona | Who are we designing for? 

One of the main benefits of conducting interviews with potential users is to help us really personify the people we are designing for. So, first, I wrote down the high-level goals from my user interviews, and pulled 3 potential goals-based personas from this. They were: the budgeter, the researcher, and first-time owner. Since Juno wants to attract younger customers, and my interviews revealed that first-time owners were in the younger bracket, the target group that made the most sense to have in mind was the first-time owner. 

I then wrote down the quotes from my interviews with these individuals that stood out to me. I categorized these quotes and pulled the common themes: brand comparison, customer experience, and risk assessment. I formulated the common pain points and goals/motivations to create a story and Juno’s target persona: Hassan Sajid.

This persona will allow us to ensure that our user is always at the centre of our design decisions. Having this to draw on will guide us to take informed approaches.

Empathy Map | What are their needs?

To further personify our user, and put ourselves in their shoes, we need to make them a fully formed individual with thoughts, actions, feelings, experiences, motivations, and challenges. A great way to do this and stay human-centred in our approach is creating an empathy map. This is a tool to help us brainstorm what they are experiencing, and how that influences them within the process of getting insured.

Phase 2 | Define

Now that we’ve conducted thorough research on the Insurance Industry and user behaviours/expectations in getting insured, we can begin synthesizing our findings. Let’s first answer: How might we meet those needs? What might meeting those needs look like? Defining what our next steps should be will give us a preliminary blueprint of our design approach.

Project Goals | How can we meet those needs?

Part of product design is addressing the reality that all stakeholders - users, designers/engineers, and the business as a whole have goals. These goals don’t live in a vacuum, however, and it’s important to see where there is overlap. Keeping these goals in mind will help in the next step of choosing features, but also further down the road when checking our assumptions about potential solutions.

Feature Roadmap

Next, we need a checklist of the features that we will have on Juno’s website to have a birds-eye view of everything that we can offer within the design. These features need to be informed by our project goals, as well as the empathy map we created earlier. I’ve also drawn on my competitive analysis to understand how to prioritize the features that will be part of the design. This will ensure we aren’t making arbitrary decisions when it comes to adding features.

Information Architecture | Sitemap

The final stage in the Define Phase is Information Architecture or IA.

 Information Architecture “focuses on organizing, structuring, and labelling content in an effective and sustainable way”. It’s how we can start to think, from a high-level point of view 

This is how we can first try and organize Juno’s flow by creating a sitemap. We have an idea of who are target user is, their needs and motivations, and now a thorough list of needed features. To consolidate this and make it clear through a sitemap.

I also conducted 2 card sorts, so that I could best understand how to organize 1. the different features, and 2. The different insurance categories. Here are the results from my Feature Card Sort and the results for my Insurance Products Card Sort

It took me 5 iterations to get to this version, and in the end is the one that best spoke to the pain point about research fatigue. This sitemap is designed to allow users to input information and get a suggested quote based on that information.

Phase 3 | Ideation

Once finalizing the Information Architecture is complete, we can start to ideate the design of the system in greater detail. Before getting into any low fidelity sketches, it’s important to verify that the flow of Juno’s service makes sense. We can do this by creating a task flow, followed by an even more detailed, flowchart. These will help us understand the journey that a user would take while using Juno. It also allows us to catch any flaws in the flow early on.

Task Flow

This task flow is a preliminary estimate of how our users might approach using Juno’s service. Although it can’t answer usability immediately, it will help us make sure that there aren’t any major issues in the flow early on.

Flow Chart

After workshopping a few iterations of the task flow above, I was able to move forward and formulate an even more detailed journey through a flowchart. This chart should encompass any journey a user might take, and all points should lead to the checkout page.