User experience transformation for India's leading general insurance provider - Travel portal

Role: UX Researcher, Team size: 8, LOB: Travel

As a UX researcher / interaction designer, I took ownership of Travel line of business. A research objective and an 8 week research plan that follows 4D double diamond design approach was created and proposed to the client which was approved.

The project started with user interviews and contextual inquieries, followed by heuristic evaluation of existing portals and competitor analysis. Empapthy maps were created to clearly understand the users, their needs and painpoints from which the user personas were derived. A feature matrix was mapped using the data collected through competitor analysis. Based on all the data collected, affinity mapping was done and themes were derived. These themes were used to arrive at the final list of features and were prioritized according to MoSCoW rule.

In the design phase, I worked on the task flows, information architecture, clickable prototype of the new portal for usability study. The final high fidelity screens, style guides and design specs were created with the help of a visual designer. 

Research objective and plan

To investigate various use cases of insurance portal for travel LOB amongst IMDs (Agents) and to understand their needs (goals) and pain points while providing various services related to insurance that includes policy issuance with following objectives;

• Discover various user personas and understand their user journeys, get an insight over multiple touch points involved.

• Understand the positive and negative aspects of existing portal for travel LOB and how it affects the agents as users.

•  Analyse competitors, get an understanding of various features provided by them and create an ideal benchmark.

Research process

User interviews

User interviews were conducted with 8 agents, 2 back office employees. Prepared a set of open ended questionnaire designed in a way to get reliable feedbacks from the users. Visited the users (agents) and interviewed them to understand their work practices, pain‑points, expectations. 

Sampling strategy followed;

• There were two types of primary users namely an IMD (Agent) and operations manager who is a back office employee.

• The agents were further classified under single client operator (who dedicatedly issues policies for this organisation) and multi client operator (who has tie ups with more than one insurance company and issues policies according to the customer's ask)

• It was also made sure that the sample users were selected across two age groups 20 - 40 years and 40 - 60 years.

User personas

Three types of user personas were created based on different users participated in the user interviews. Collected their demographic details analyzed their responsibilities along with goals and the problems they face in achieving their objective while using the existing application.

Heuristic Evaluation & Competitor Analysis

• Heuristic evaluation was performed on all the pages of the portal based on Nielsen and Norman's heuristic principles. Prepared a report with all the issues found with appropriate recommendations. 

• Feature based competitor analysis of 3 competitors Religare, TATA AIG, HDFC Ergo were performed (TATA AIG was made as benchmark product as the agents were able to issue a policy in less than 45 seconds by filling minimum number of mandatory fields) and a feature matrix was created.

Themes and Research Findings

Solution