Overview

My employer wanted to further develop and implement a web application that had done well in pilot testing. The initial application allowed members of this insurance company to look up their property by address to see what, if any, catastrophic events were a threat.

The project I became apart of took this application further to add additional functionality and features to make the application a tool of empowerment to assist members in mitigating the risks known to their property and to what degree a particular risk was a threat.

Problem Statement

Every year insurance companies pay out a lot of money to cover claims when disaster strikes. Most people do not have access to a comprehensive database of information detailing the level of risk of wildfires, storm surge, flooding, earthquakes, hurricanes or tornadoes when making home-buying decisions.

Much of this data is dispersed in several different governmental databases. If people have access to an aggregation of this information they may be able to make more informed decisions and not purchase a home in a floodplain or where the wildfire risk is significantly high, thus avoiding a future claim payout saving the company money and giving homeowners peace of mind that the things they care about are safe.

The other problem people face is when they are already living where there is a risk to their property, what can they do to mitigate that risk?

Users & Audience

This application is intended for members of this insurance company who are looking to purchase property or who want to know what the risks are to their current property and how to address those risks.

Roles & Responsibilities

My role on this project was that of UX and UI design. I worked very closely with another UX designer to work through edge cases, information hierarchy and architecture and how to incorporate the features and additional functionality the team had settled upon to incorporate into this phase of the application's development lifecycle.

Besides myself and the other UX designer the team also consisted of two business/product owners, a front-end developer, a few back-end developers, a technical analyst, a project manager and our scrum master.

Scope & Constraints

The scope of this consisted of taking an existing design that had been born of an innovation competition and add additional features and functionality that would further the usefulness of the tool beyond just informing members of risk. The primary additional feature was a risk mitigation “To-Do” list.

A constraint or challenge we encountered was that of conflicting priorities from both of the business/product owners and the tendency of our team to slip into prescriptive design by committee.

We were able to overcome these challenges by encouraging each other to cooperate, collaborate and compromise. As designers we listened to input from the business and were able to interpret their priorities and present designs that satisfied both parties without compromising the overall vision and were met with great approval.

Process

This project started off with a Design Studio session where our entire team and stakeholders had a chance to sketch and communicate assumptions and vision for the product. We were able to discover potential features to add to the application through this process.

Beyond the Design Studio we worked in agile, scrum and had two week sprints. We iterated through designs and created paper prototypes we conducted usability tests with early in the project.

For the usability tests we had a moderator and myself in the room with the user, I was the “computer” moving the papers and pages to simulate interaction with the tool. We collected our observations from these tests and made adjustments accordingly to our designs and iterated through to a high-fidelity prototype we also tested before implementing the final build of the tool.

Outcomes & Lessons

From this project I learned about the effectiveness of a Design Studio early in a project, how to navigate design decisions when you have two business/product owners on a project who sometimes disagree about priorities, and how to conduct successful paper prototype usability tests.

Challenges will almost always be present in a project whether they are internal to the team or external. Success, however, depends on you being able to overcome those challenges and obstacles through constructive collaboration and cooperation.