Role
Lead Designer
Contribution
User research, UI Design, Concept Design, Prototyping, User testing, Re-iteration
Date
Jun 2023 - Ongoing
In 2019, Singlife introduced the Singlife App, launching its inaugural product, the Singlife Account, which operates as a High yield savings plan.
In 2022, as part of the company's expansion endeavours, Singlife merged with Aviva, gaining an additional 1.5 million customers and thus able to further expand its product offerings. As the organization's goals evolved, more insurance features were required to beintegrated into the platform, leading to changes in the initial concept of the Singlife app.
This merger has led to the evolution of the Singlife app, prompting a critical question about its core proposition and vision amidst new business goals.
Goal of New Initiative
Product Vision
Strengthen our market position as a company primarily dedicated to insurance, By refining the app's focus to insurance-centric functions.
Empower our expanded customer base with intuitive insurance management, offering comprehensive service from initial purchase to ongoing support, all within a user-friendly app.
The Design Thinking Process
Discovery and Definition
I initiated the project by conducting user interviews to explore the motivations, attitudes, and behaviors that influence decisions regarding their insurance ownership.
To uncover this, we spoke with 7 participants from our targeted customer segments.
Key Insights 🔍
Emerging families segment
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Life stages play a core part when purchasing insurance coverage 🤰🏻
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Are more inclined to rely on their advisors to recommend the most ideal coverage and products.
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Appreciate unbiased comparisons across competitors to recommend products that best meet their coverage needs.
Young Adult segment
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Prioritize savings over insurance coverage 💰
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Policies are purchased and managed for them by their parents
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Policies are purchased and managed for them by their parents
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Have no intention to purchase in the short term (next 6 months).
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Are willing to independently purchase "small ticket items" like travel or Personal Accident insurance online.
User Persona
Through the interview sessions, we were able to then create personas that align with our previously identified customer segments. This helps us to further empathise and understand potential needs and existing pain points of our consumers.
Young Adult segment
Emerging Family segment
Established User Goals 🎯
Deep diving to ascertain the order of importance of features
Having identified the user goals, our next step was to determine which features hold the highest priority for them. We conducted a broader quantitative survey and got participants to share their thoughts on which features they consider most crucial.
The scope of the survey involved inviting participants to rank a list of features based on their importance. The survey results are highlighted with the figures on the right.
01
Claims handling
4
Accident Assistance
02
Policy Management
5
Profile Management
03
Policy Payment
6
General Customer Support
7
Provider Network
8
Policy Discovery
9
Wellness Programmes/rewards
“Among the sought-after features in an insurance app, post-purchase services ranks highest, followed by the importance of customer support and ease of discovery on product offerings.”
Initial Design
"Home" page design
The initial design was centered around the Singlife Account, our flagship product. The sections on the home screens provided an overview of customers' Singlife Accounts and included tasks aimed at promoting fund deposits.
"Services" screen design
With the merger, our app quickly saw an influx of insurance servicing features, most of which were consolidated under the "services" section.
Iterated Concept Design
After synthesizing our findings, we iterated the design to align with conclusions from both qualitative and quantitative studies.
For instance, in Policy Servicing, we prioritized post-sale services that are highly ranked in importance by consumers and fulfill their specific functional requirements.
Next, in Policy Management, we prioritized efficient policy handling based on user goals, ensuring a unified platform where users can easily access comprehensive coverage information.
Finally in Policy Servicing, we focused on pushing for small ticket items to be more findable and accessible for users to balance both consumer behaviour and business goals.
1. Policy servicing
2. Policy management
3. Policy servicing + Small ticket item
Proof of Concept
Following the iterated design we further aligned our objectives with the stakeholders.
We saw the need to run a usability test to validate the selected concept.
In the test, we set up a series of tasks for a new group of users across the same segments to align our new concept.
The key objectives that we set out with for this usability test were to assess the findability of key features on "Home" page, validate our design decisions and gather feedback on the design.
Insights
What the users thought could be improved
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Participants also felt there was a misalignment with their expectations on the Premium Payment feature, i.e. they expected to be able to make payment directly through the feature, not realising we only supported view only information in our design.
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Participants prefer infographic visualisations such as graphs as it intrigues them to find out what the gaps in their coverages are
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Participants expressed that premium payment is good info to be shown on the dashboard, specifically: Next due amount due date
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Participants also felt there was a misalignment with their expectations on the "More" feature under the bottom navigation, i.e. they expected “More” to be services other than what’s available on the dashboard, rather than all services.
Learnings✨
Designing an online insurance experience requires careful consideration of several factors:
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Instilling trustworthiness through design elements and language within the application.
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Simplifying the process to uncover needs and compare products across insurers.
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Reducing jargon and presenting product details in a quick and easy-to-understand manner.
Key findings suggest that the role of advisors remains pivotal and challenging to replace. Collaborating with advisors to promote and articulate the app's valuable features is crucial for maximizing adoption and usage. Moreover, a significant number of participants were initially unaware of insurance apps. Those who did use such apps were often encouraged by advisors.
Despite this, there is notable enthusiasm among users to adopt the Singlife app after becoming acquainted with its offerings.
These insights underscore the importance of integrating user-centric design principles and leveraging advisor partnerships to enhance the effectiveness and appeal of insurance applications in the digital marketplace.