User Experience Design Intern (June 2020 - April 2021)
Overview
Role
User Experience Design
User Research
Key Deliverables
4 Projects, Concept Pitches, High Fidelity Flows, Prototypes, Documentation
Team
Manager: Mary Burton
Team members: Kierstan, Joe, Kevin, Wes, Jeff, James, Scott
Tools
Figma, Miro, User Testing, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Teams, Adobe XD, AB Testing, Focus Group User Tests
My Experience at American Family Insurance
During Summer 2020, amidst a global pandemic, I got the opportunity to intern as a User Experience Designer with American Family Insurance. My projects revolved around researching, designing, and prototyping smooth customer and underwriter experiences.
After completing my internship I got the opportunity to continue working with the amazing team to hone my skills and since then I have had some great projects to have hands on experience with and the opportunity to work with cutting edge technology.
Though terrifying at times and sometimes overwhelming – I rose to the occasion, learned a ton about myself and what type of designer I want to become, learned from some of the best designers, met a bunch of eclectic people that I will cherish forever, and ultimately designed new features and explorations.
Key projects I worked on
01 Improved claims reporting process for customer retention
Conducted an end-to-end design process for My Account (an American Family Insurance application for customer to manage their information) for improving the current state for reporting and drafting claims, . This project allowed me to gain experience with the full product development from gathering stories, doing research, prototypes and final designs.
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Generated current state mockups on Figma
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Ran a usability audit to identify the key problem areas in the current process of reporting and drafting claims
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Synthesized insights to propose 5 potential solutions
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Based on the insights I ideated and prototyped a set of recommendations
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Ran 60 AB test to gain quantifiable data and validate proposed recommendations
KPI: Number of drafts reduced as customer can easily resume drafted claim
NEXT STEPS: The prototype needs to be tested
02 Optimized an adjuster work flow for selecting letter templates
The goal of the project was to add a way to define favorites so that the adjusters get to the required and most frequently used templated quickly and easily.
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I analyzed the existing focus group interview notes, exploratory research to identify the problem spaces
"Defining search and filtering requirements does not address the larger problem adjusters face."
"AFI adjusters only use a few templates"
"Adjusters reference the letter number to find the correct template"
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Conducted a secondary research and found out personalized content tends to increase user engagement and satisfaction
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Proposed a way to help adjusters favorite their frequently used template and sort the templates to save time
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Through current state analysis, ideation, wireframing & rapid prototyping, created visualizations that optimized an adjuster work flow for selecting letter templates
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User feedback suggested that the enhancements resonated well with them
KPI:
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Optimized an adjuster work flow for selecting letter templates by 42.8%
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Reduced the maximum number of clicks from 7 to 4.
NEXT STEPS: Work with the development team to get the final design rolling
03 Proposed enhancements to make underwriting process faster
Conducted a usability test in order to analyze whether the interactive letter system (A system to systematically generate letters), which includes the interactive letter interview screen, the letter preview screen, and the submitting screen, were useful, usable and desirable in drafting a correspondence letter for an insured by the underwriters.
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Performed qualitative analysis to enhance the interaction between underwriters & 3 interactive letters; Threshold, Termination & Hard Inspection Letters
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Created a portal prototype to understand the pains, gains and desires of the users
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Planned, recruited and conducted 8 user researches, with a focus on exploring the current working style of the underwriters
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Turned research insights into actionable plans by proposing 7 enhancements
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Created deliverable documents for the team to communicate
KPI: Underwriter and agent satisfaction increased
NEXT STEPS: The proposed enhancements need to be prototyped and tested
04 Created exploration-ideation-execution process prototype for Design Studio
Pivoted from changing something small to reevaluating how everyone in the company does design was a naturally uncomfortable pitch. However with consistency I managed to develop a prototype based on the pre existing models in the enterprise.
Primary Research
Conducted primary research
1) Jobs To Be Done
2) SAFE 5.0 Framework
3) Agile Development
4) Customer Experience
5) Service Design
Interview
1) Prepared a questionnaire
2) Identified the initial hand-off errors within teams and outside teams
3) Conducted 30 minute interviews with 23 members
Interview Analysis
1) Using Miro, identified the painpoints and the problems
2) Re-interviewed to double check ambiguous facts
3) Discussed all the issues with my manager
Process Flow
Created a process flow
prototype after several
iterations
Based on my primary research I created a design process model. This model was the integration of JTBD, Scaled Agile Framework, Stanford D School process and the UX Roles (Defined). I presented the diagram created, to both the design strategy team and the user experience design team and then proceeded to conduct my interviews and then iterate over my representation.
1) Identified the needs of the process, according to the primary research.
2) Based on the needs I identified the teams that would be involved in the design studio process (Consumer Insights team, Design Strategy team, Development team, Business owners etc).
3) Identified the specific team members that I would interview with my manager.
4) Conducting 23 interviews
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Iterated over the initially designed process and detailed all the steps based on the interviews. Conducted re-interviews when doubts were generated. This process of development took 6 weeks.
**Due to confidentiality, a brief overview of the final prototype is presented. To know about the detailed process of arriving at the final prototype please shoot an email!
KPI: Created a prototype which the team is currently using as a basis for product development.
NEXT STEPS: The prototype needs to be validated with different types of projects to implement it across the enterprise.
Key Learning
My impact at the enterprise
I am grateful that I was trusted with such an important facilitation project. I was able to apply not only my UX skill set but also my managerial and research expertise to shape the design process of AmFam. The prototype that I developed will help the enterprise ease out the hand offs from one team to other and increase communication and productivity.
Cross-team collaborations
I worked with the consumer insights team, development team, user experience design team and the design strategy team while collaborating with the other operating companies ( op-co's). I was given an exposure to dive into every teams working style and taught me a lot about cross-domain collaborations. I can proudly say I came out being more alert and prompt.
My key takeaways while collaborating were:
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Never hesitate to ask question even if it is the most pettiest question. It would save the team some fruitful hours!
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Interact and network with the maximum number of people across the enterprise specially the ones not from your own team as you will end of talking to your teammates almost everyday.
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Be over enthusiastic to delve into work out of your comfort zone.
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Make technology your best friend (Keeping in mind the current COVID time)
Human experience
While collaborating with the operating company, I realized we have a lot of users using our application. All the agents, customers and the tracking team. We analyzed the needs of each typology of the user and tried to design the system for a human and not just a typology of user. The final design is still to go up and get tested but the entire experience of generating the interaction using the user flows helped me support my vision and ultimate goal.