Life Pending Report
for independent insurance agents
All assets have been remade and genericized due to NDA requirements
From
To
Project Overview:
Create an interactive experience so insurance agents can track life insurance applicants through the underwriting process in Nationwide Insurance’s independent agent servicing web portal that will work on mobile as well as on the desktop.
Project Aspects:
Led a 2 person UX team consisting of interaction designer (me) and visual designer
Close collaboration with business units and Dev team
Completed in high fidelity wireframe generated in Axure
(Remade assets done in Figma)
Old tabular format for the Life Pending Report
Requirements:
Allow for easy understanding of where all cases are in their pending book of work
Allow for easy understanding of where individual client is in underwriting process
Let agent know the client’s next step in the process and who is responsible for that step
Make it easy and intuitive for novice users
Make it robust and informative for expert users
Real-Time or Near-Real-Time solution
The Ask:
Life insurance underwriting is a complicated
Multi-step process that can become more complex as questions get answered
Current Life Pending Report was broken
Agents not sure where prospective clients are in the process
90 day window for commissions
Mobile and desktop
The User:
Independent agents (use multiple systems)
Inexperienced agents selling insurance in the gig economy
Regional supervisors
Company Counterparts
Issues:
Devs wanted path of least resistance, a Table
Tables are easy
Data is already stored that way
Velocity baby
Convincing project management to go with non-typical interaction that would take more time
"Convincing" the PM required proof of concept. This boiled down to discussions of the best uses of tables as well as when tabular information is less useful. Those discussions were followed by clickable prototypes with dummy data.
Research Effort:
Expert analysis
Competitor analysis
Consumer timeline analysis
Honestly the research effort was minimal. The existing report was, quite frankly, broken. With a subpar product in production, all interviews returned the answer "We just want something that works."
Design Advocacy:
UX advocated for "notecards" and “pizza tracker”
Deconstructed table
Scannable
Informational hierarchy
Good design takes time
Design Results:
Redesigned Life Pending Experience
Overview Desktop
Overview Mobile
Case Details Desktop
Case Details Mobile
The Results:
Working Life Pending Report
Positive feedback from agents
Increased user efficiency
Overall Reduced Life Insurance help center call volume by about 5% and near complete reduction in calls concerning where applicants were in the underwriting process
Project manager won an internal innovation award for changing industry state of practice
