The project was broken down into a number of phases of work to help alleviate pressure and create more manageable chunks. Before any phases of work began, I was a part of a team remotely meeting with and listening to internal staff and stakeholders to help us understand current processes and tooling. We also heard from a number of users who gave their feedback on how they find the current implementation.

With each phase of work, time was spent on initial discovery onsite having time with both stakeholders and users to gain understanding and insight. This time typically started with a series of curated workshops aimed to draw out key feedback and expertise on each of the phases. Rough personas could then be formed off the back of initial conversation and research to help guide key decisions throughout. This time onsite allowed key relationships to be built for going forward on the project, it also allowed the opportunity to observe users in their own environments giving appreciation for behaviours and context. Using the research, the team was able to define goals for each phase – guiding decisions, tasks, and focus. These goals were tangible outcomes that could be understood by the business while achieving valuable results. Throughout each phase, there was a very conscious effort to make sure designs, wireframes, and ideas were put in front of users and stakeholders to validate and test decisions, ensuring nothing was overlooked and delightful experiences were created.

The first phase of work was to create a system for which new brokers could be onboarded into the organisation. The workshop sessions highlighted the disorganisation and confusion both internal staff and users face during this time. As a team, we hoped to eliminate paper forms and severely reduce human error. Based off insights formed from our user interviews and other research, we began to ideate various aspects of the new product through collaborative sketching sessions and wireframing. These led to high fidelity designs and the forming of our design system.

The second phase of work was to update and reimagine the organisations internal network that allowed brokers to self-serve with information and guidance in how to run their franchises. This phase of work was one in which I acted as team lead, managing a multi-disciplinary team whilst also acting as one of two hands-on UX Designers. The responsibilities included running scrums, managing Jira boards and workload, checking in with teams to ensure the right resources were allocated, meeting with clients regularly and ad-hoc to ensure manage expectations, and run end-of-sprint demos with the wider business including C-Suite stakeholders. During discovery, our team met a number of users different from the previous phase, giving us new relationships and the ability to build trust, gaining open and honest feedback on products. Once again, I set goals for the project – eliminating wasted time looking for information, rebuilding trust in the fallen network, and increasing performance. Guided by these goals, constraints of the project (e.g. platform and time), and research conducted I began to ideate solutions to the problems outlined whilst considering the information architecture and sitemap. All this culminated in highly considered designs that were handed off the developers ready to be implemented.

Phase three of the project was to re-envision how brokers could receive quotes from insurance carriers. This phase required considerable inout and testing from both users and stakeholders as we went. Whilst we had our design system to allow us to move quickly creating the necessary forms for this phase, complex scenarios and variations meant spending extended periods of time thinking through creative solutions and presenting these back to experts in order to get a balance between an elegant solution and the compliance of insurance carriers.