Car Damage Claim web app for an insurance company
Ergo Digital IT
In-Person and Remote User Testing, Wireframes, Responsive UI Design, Design Library maintenance, Prototyping.
Ergo Digital IT is the new digital delivery arm of one of the largest insurers in Germany (Ergo Group), that has been built to drive innovation – both for digital solutions and technology. Schadenmeldung (German for filing a car insurance claim), is a mobile-responsive web app that enables insurance customers to easily report a car damage and file their claim online.
The client had a huge amount of car accident reports happening over the phone which resulted in huge waiting times for the clients and high costs for hiring more customer support employees. We needed to create a web application that will be used by Ergo's customers to report a car accident and file an insurance claim online.
01 Project overview
Simplify the file claim process
I received the project brief and spent the first days clarifying the current process of filing an insurance claim (about 20 steps) and tried to re-design it while cutting back on the process steps. You see, filing a claim after you've had a car accident is something no one likes doing. Most of the time, people are still shocked or angry while recalling the event and having to complete 20 steps just makes them more angry.
Design the Interface with accordance to Ergo's Design System
While it may seem obvious that the UI needs to be done according to an existing style guide, it was actually quite a challenge because Ergo had just transitioned into a new Corporate Identity and there were a lot of design components missing in the new library which had to be created from scratch.
02 Process and Solution
Project Background
Ergo Digital IT was in the process of digitalizing various insurance products- for business clients as well as end clients.
As a Senior UX/UI Designer, I was involved in the product design of 5 different insurance products:
- a product for applying and managing bank Guarantees (B2B)
- a product for filing auto insurance Claims (B2C + B2B)
- a cyber insurance product (B2C)
- a B2B portal serving high-end business customers
- a business insurance online calculator (B2B)
The product development at Ergo Digital IT was following the SCRUM Framework. I was communicating with the Product Owner and the Development Team on a daily basis.
Main Challenges
Simplify the complex logic behind the insurance products and create user flows that reduce the drop-off rate
The insurance market is Germany is one of the oldest insurance markets in the world. As such, most of the processes behind applying for and purchasing an insurance policy are very long and complicated and were created on the premises that the client will be sitting in-person next to the insurance broker. By working closely with some of the Product Owners inside Ergo, we were able to streamline the processes and alter them in a way that doesn’t require the clients to be in direct contact with the Insurer in order to purchase policies, change their data or file a claim.
Design products for target users that are not easy to get access to
It’s best practice to do user research prior to the design phase. However, in some of the projects, the target users were really hard to get access to and the product had to be either designed and tested afterwards or tested with a target group closer to the original one. To help gather feedback in the initial design stages, I facilitated remote user testing. This was one of the best ways to find usability issues and required little time for completion, so the target users (business executives, insurance brokers) were willing to participate without losing valuable time. It was a win-win for both sides.
Process
In-Person Interviews/ Usability Testing
In-person user interviews and usability testing were used to validate the initial assumptions and fix usability problems. The test person had to file an insurance claim after an imaginary incident, using the prototype. A total of 3 scenarios were tested with 20 participants.
Key questions
- Would the test users report their vehicle damage online? What is important for them?
- Online claim reporting: how user-friendly is our solution?
- Are all questions easy to understand?
- What happens if the user is stuck? Do they stop using the online claim form?
- How can we improve the process?
Test setup
The tests consisted of 2 parts:
Part 1 (app. 10 mins) -Short conversation about the user's current car insurance and experiences with reporting vehicle damage (qualitative).
Part 2 (app. 40 mins) -Conducting usability tests using an online prototype and one of 3 different test scenarios (quantitative) All conversations and screen time were recorded, so I was able to re-hear everything and evaluate the results.
The Results
- The flow was good and logical as all test users were able to independently complete the claim reporting process.
- The mandatory fields should be reduced or completely removed for certain questions as many users were noticeably irritated or confused about the big amount of questions they needed to answer
- The color choice for the navigation was not ideal, as people were confused and didn't know how to switch from one question to the next one
User Interface Design and Prototyping
I took over the wireframes from another designer in the team and started creating the user interface.To make my life easier, I named the files inside Sketch to match the Tickets created in Jira. F.e. ECM 446, ECM 448 etc. This way, I could easily connect the exact screen the developers needed with the corresponding ticket. Next, I connected all the ready screens and created the User Flows. There was a total of 7 different user flows, based on the different car accident types.
You can view some more screens here.
03 Outcome
‘Schadenmeldung’ significantly reduced calls to customer support
The project was released in 2019 and is currently serving thousands of customers filing claims and reported a significant lower numbers of calls.
The Handoff included documenting the whole project from start to finish, including the results from the user testing to the Product Owner as well as hading over the design files and giving access to all screens to the Development Team. In addition, I prepared a separate Style Guide and Project Brief for the developers which also included the critical User Flows and critical interactions.
See it live here.
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