Digitizing the life insurance industry
Operating between carriers, agents, and policyholders,SUREIFYbuilds and whitelabels web-apps for life insurance carriers. One such product, LifetimeAcquire™, focuses on the application process—involving five distinct workflows and many different edge-cases.
In this project, our goal was to do a massive overhaul for the Acquire product—involving our new design system, brand new features, and major consideration to usability.
Acquire Demo
Jun 2022 – Sep 2022
Details
Client
Sureify
Role
Jr. Product Designer
Tooling
Figma
Domains
Form Design, Design Systems, Components
Team
David Schultz
Designer
DJ Mackintosh
Designer
Nav Badheka
Customer Delivery
Pooja Rao
Product Owner
Nancy Bush
VP Pre-Sales
Project Goals
Build a clickable demo
i.e., an actual webpage that Sales could use for product demos.
Upgrade to sureUI
LifetimeAcquire™ hadn’t seen a significant update since sureUI (our design system) was released.
Prototype new features
Sales had been selling the *idea* of new features, but they hadn’t truly been fleshed out yet.
Navigating a new design paradigm
Typically, design work at Sureify was scoped by either the product team or a client team. However, this project was issued to the demo team—and it created an entirely different paradigm for us (as designers).
Where’s the project manager?
You may have noticed that we didn’t have a PM on this project*.
*...well, sort of. Nav Badheka acted as our PM, issuing tickets and coordinating with the dev + Sales teams. (he was excellent!)
High levels of agency
Without a traditional PM, it was on us (as designers) to be decisive & set the groundwork for new iterations of LifetimeAcquire™.
Our work was exploratory. It was scrappy. We took rough ideas, and molded them into a working prototype. We drafted tickets as we learned to navigate our constraints.
Quick turnarounds
Specs were drafted week-by-week, constraints were tight, and iteration needed to be rapid. Additionally, everything we designed needed to be quick for our dev team to implement.
Scope (4 main workflows)
I worked very closely on this project with another designer, DJ Mackintosh. Together, we built 4 distinct workflows for desktop + mobile viewports.
Quote Form for Policyholders
A straightforward, 2-page form for prospective policyholders to receive a brief quote.
Application Form
After receiving a quote, users then fill out an extended application form.
Quote Tool for Agents
A 1-page tool, formatted for power-users. Intended for agents who generate quotes on a routine basis.
OnTrack™ & eDelivery
Once an application is submitted, it needs to go through underwriting before approval. OnTrack™ coordinates this process.
Upgrading to sureUI
As we adjusted to the demo paradigm, our initial task was to refresh existing screens with the new sureUI design system. In the first few weeks, we laid the groundwork for the layout, look, and feel of the new experience.
Managing complex form fields
Pretty quickly, we ran into our first major hurdle—sureUI hadn’t yet encountered the complex form fields necessary for insurance applications.
Sentence-length labels
sureUI’s form fields were conceived for simple input (e.g. a login form).
However, insurance forms often ask sentence-length questions, with necessary context behind them. This meant our existing components were woefully unequipped.
Developer constraints
An early solution I proposed was to use alternative field components—namely, ones that use box-fill styling (as seen in Material-UI).
However, due to tight deadlines + a more novice dev team, we needed to work with what we had.
In response
I designed a system of wrapper components, which separate the field label into a separate hierarchy. These satisfied both design and development constraints.
OnTrack™: A multi-user dashboard
The idea behind OnTrack™ and e-Delivery was to give all parties involved (in underwriting) a shared dashboard to track its progress.
What is underwriting?
At this stage of an insurance application, a number of documents (i.e. requirements) are written, passed around, and signed.
Problem: it gets confusing
With multiple parties involved, it gets difficult to see how far along the process is, who is responsible for what, etc.
Solution: a pizza tracker!
Sales realized that our clients needed a product/feature that addressed this issue. Something like... a pizza tracker?
This idea formed the basis for the OnTrack™ dashboard, and is where DJ & I started our ideation.
