Product Design: New SaaS Feature

Intruity Corporation | New Feature Launch

As the Lead Designer at Intruity Corporation, I worked on an impactful project that aimed to expand the scope of our CRM, OneLink. Traditionally a tool tailored to Health & Life insurance agents, the vision was to transform it into a comprehensive platform, to better serve Property & Casualty (P&C) Insurance Agents and beyond. The task at hand was to design a new, specific asset management feature for this broader user base. This endeavor not only challenged my UI/UX design skills but also called for a keen understanding of our new users' unique needs and workflows.

The Project Landscape

OneLink, a CRM solution originally built for Health & Life insurance agents, harbored the potential to serve a broader audience. We recognized an opportunity to expand its user base to P&C agents, a group that often faced difficulties finding efficient asset management solutions in most conventional CRM systems.

Navigating Challenges and Setting Objectives

The largest challenge lied in integrating a new feature into an existing CRM system, initially designed for a different set of users. We had to address the specific, often nuanced, needs of P&C agents while ensuring ease of use, facilitating quick adaptation, and offering seamless integration with OneLink's existing features. This was all to ensure a smooth transition and maintain a consistent user experience.

Crafting a User-Centric Solution

My first step involved a comprehensive user need analysis, allowing us to paint a clearer picture of what our users required. The following thought process explains the user personas created for this new feature:

Candace, the owner of a mid-sized P&C insurance agency, is a seasoned professional with over 20 years of industry experience. Representing decision-makers, her persona emphasizes the need for a CRM system that tailors to specific business needs, simplifies work processes, and is intuitive to use. While she is technologically adept, she values software that doesn't require a steep learning curve. This requirement accentuates the need for our product to have a user-friendly interface.

1. The choice of her age and professional background reflects her extensive industry experience, leading a successful insurance agency. It captures the persona of a professional who understands her organization's needs.

2. Her needs and goals emphasize the desire for a CRM solution that streamlines work processes and caters to the specifics of P&C insurance, highlighting the importance of a product designed for this particular sector.

3. Her tech savviness indicates that while she is technologically adept, she doesn't want to deal with complex systems. It accentuates the requirement for the product to have an intuitive and user-friendly interface.

Michael, a dedicated insurance agent, embodies users who interact with the CRM system regularly as part of their daily tasks. His persona helps the product designer understand the needs and goals of a frontline user who directly benefits from a user-friendly, efficient CRM system.

1. His younger age reflects the demographic of many insurance agents in the industry today, ensuring the product appeals to this target user group.

2. Michael's needs and goals reinforce the desire for an effective and efficient tool that helps him manage his tasks and serve his clients better. His persona reminds the product designer that the end goal of this product is not only to streamline operations but also to improve the customer service experience.

3. His tech savviness suggests that while he is comfortable using digital tools, he prefers straightforward, intuitive software. This understanding will inform design decisions to ensure the system does not disrupt his workflow or distract from his primary tasks.

Through these personas, the design process is kept user-centered, ensuring the resulting product meets the needs of its main users - the agency owner and the insurance agent. Each design decision made during the product development process will be evaluated with Candace and Michael in mind, creating a solution that is not only efficient but also easy to use and effective for its intended users.

User Flow Mapping & Prototyping for Clarity

Moving forward, I worked with our in-house development team to create a user flow map, outlining the functions of the new asset management feature. This allowed us to visualize and understand how they would interact with the feature. (Two flow charts were made: one for Candace, the agency owner, and another from Michael's perspective as the insurance agent. Regrettably, I am unable to present the employee flow chart at this time.)

My primary objective was to make the asset creation process as user friendly as possible. To achieve this, a clear and structured user flow is designed with a logical progression from the home dashboard to the final creation of the asset.

1. The decision to initiate the user flow from the 'home dashboard' acknowledges the reality of a user's typical journey within the software. Users by default land on the home dashboard when they log in, making it a natural starting point for any task. This approach also caters to the principle of familiarity and predictability in UX design. Even though the user has the ability to navigate to 'Company setup', 'Data setup', and 'Asset Types' from any part of the software, commencing from the home dashboard aligns with the users' standard flow and ensures they maintain a sense of orientation and context within the application.

2. The 'Create a New Asset' flow focuses on gathering necessary information in a sequential manner, reducing cognitive load for users. By first defining the asset's type, association, and status, users can form a broad understanding of the asset before diving into specific properties.

3. The decision to allow the user to add as many properties as needed offers flexibility. Each asset might require different properties based on its unique characteristics. By providing a generic 'Property Creation' flow, the system can cater to a wide variety of assets.

   
   

Throughout the design process, the goal was to minimize complexity, enhance user control, and support different types of assets, all while maintaining a consistent and predictable user flow.

I used Figma to create detailed prototypes and wireframes. These visual guides served as an essential blueprint to shape the design and uncover any potential friction points in the user flow. With the personas of Candace and Michael in mind, I was careful to ensure that every screen, every interaction would be intuitive and align with their needs and tech-savviness levels.

I sought continuous feedback from cross-functional teams, including our, developers, and stakeholders. Their diverse perspectives helped identify potential oversights and added depth to the solution.

Lessons Learned

Throughout the course of this project, we faced several challenges that ultimately served as learning experiences for us. One such hurdle was the absence of an established design system, which often made maintaining software continuity a daunting task. However, this gave us the opportunity to recognize the value of a design system in streamlining design operations and maintaining consistency across the platform.

Negotiating with stakeholders presented another set of challenges. Balancing business objectives with the goal of enhancing the user experience necessitated open dialogues and collaborations, reinforcing the importance of effective communication in design projects. It was essential to justify the value of each UX improvement initiative and clearly articulate how these changes would ultimately serve the business goals.

Lastly, one significant limitation we faced was the lack of comprehensive user testing. While we gathered feedback from cross-functional teams during the design process, having direct input from end-users through structured user testing would have provided deeper insights into the usability of our solution. This understanding underlined the importance of user testing in validating our design decisions and the need to advocate for it in future projects.

The Results

Since the launch, we have witnessed steady growth in our P&C user base. The introduction of this feature paves the way for a new form of field management within OneLink.

Current and new clients have started requesting minor alterations to enable this feature and provide greater flexibility. These changes have led us to clients in completely different industries, an example being a Motocross company.

Key Learnings & Future Influence

This project has been a great learning opportunity, providing valuable insights that will shape my approach to future design work. First, I recognized the importance of a well-defined design system in ensuring consistency and efficiency across the product. This will guide me in advocating for and contributing to the establishment of robust design systems in future projects.

The project also reinforced the value of effective communication with stakeholders. In the future, I will continue to emphasize the connection between a great user experience and business success, to align UX initiatives with business objectives.

The lack of comprehensive user testing in this project illuminated the significance of direct user feedback in shaping and validating design decisions. Moving forward, I will push for the inclusion of structured user testing in the design process, to ensure our solutions truly meet the needs of our users and provide a seamless experience.