Kaus Insurance
RESEARCH • UX • BRAND • UI
Background
Kaus has been following a B2B business model for the past 30 years and they want to expand their services to a wider audience. They offer all types of insurance: property, motor, liability, marine, aviation, life, health, and protection as well as optimized packages. However, their online presence isn’t as strong as they’d like so they are prioritizing creating a user-friendly site that’s easy to browse while keeping costs low.
SOLUTION
To appeal to a wider and younger audience, Kaus needs a responsive e-commerce website that is pleasing to use and that allows customers to browse through all products easier. The company could also benefit from a modern logo redesign to match the website redesign.
ROLE
UX/UI Designer, UX researcher
TIMELINE
January - March 2022
TOOLS
Figma, Whimsical, OptimalWorkshop
Discovery & Research
RESEARCH GOALS
My research goals focused on determining what were the common behaviors shown in choosing insurance plans and what, if any, were risks to be avoided with the purchasing of said insurance plans.
To get started, I wanted to research other competitors that dealt with insurance to see how they handled these risks and what purchasing method seemed to be the most common.
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
There is a lot of information to digest when shopping for insurance. In my research of direct and indirect competitors, I found that customer support is an absolute necessity to help insurance buyers navigate the process. However, I found that it was also important to maintain a balance of customer support so that users didn’t feel pressured by constant presence but also didn’t feel like it was a pain point to receive support.
USER INTERVIEWS
To gain an understanding of what users wanted for their insurance and how they approached the shopping experience, I interviewed 8 people with different backgrounds and levels of insurance experience.
Through the interview results I was able to determine the most common needs amongst users.
A simplified explanation of insurance information.
Balanced customer service relationship, not too much contact and not too little.
More affordable insurance plans that meet all of the needs of the user.
Variety in how to complete the process of purchasing insurance. Some of the participants preferred to complete the entire process fully online without the need to speak to a person.
PLANNING AROUND BEGINNERS
With the data gathered during the interviews, I created personas that portrayed the two ends of the spectrum of users. One with more experience and motivations for buying insurance and another that was more of a beginner that needs an easy-to-understand process for their first time buying insurance. I decided to use my second persona, Martin, to better illustrate how user-friendly Kaus is for beginners.
Product & Information Architecture
PROJECT GOALS
I identified the business and user goals after conducting my research and referencing the original brief to evaluate their common goals to keep in mind when building features for the website:
Easy to navigate
Clear information
Positive UX from start to finish
Affordability
Reliable and Trustworthy
PRODUCT REQUIREMENTS
Using that information I listed out the product requirements I would need for building my prototype and categorized them into sections based on their importance, the top two sections having the top priority.
Must Have
Nice to Have
Surprising & Delightful
CARD SORTING
Next, I set up a card sorting study and recruited 9 participants to categorize the cards into groups that made the most sense to them to gain insight on what would be most helpful to users when navigating the website.
The most common groups created:
Account, Product/Product Services
Cards that caused some confusion:
ChatBot, FAQ, About Us, Insurance Glossary Terms
SITEMAP
I then mapped out the sitemap for my persona and included pages that would be developed in future phases to give an idea of what the product would look like once it was fully flushed out. This included the community pages, which would be profiles for organizations and individuals. Those pages are in the tertiary and quaternary menus shown above, excluding the ‘Create Your Own Bundle’ wizard.
Flows
TASK FLOW: GETTING A QUOTE
After organizing all the information gathered in the previous phases I realized the most crucial task for any user exploring the site was to obtain a quote for an insurance policy. So I mapped out a basic task flow to see how well the pages connected with one another.
USER FLOW
Mapping out a user task flow based on my chosen persona to focus on which key screens would be necessary for the site’s design and what obstacles a user may come across when navigating the site and the insurance wizard process. I wanted to ensure I planned out solutions for any roadblocks a beginner could face.
Wireframes
FIGMA SKETCHES
I created my wireframe ‘sketches’ in Figma for the homepage, obtaining a quote using the insurance wizard, and then the checkout process screens. I gathered all the information from my interviews and competitive research to create the screens and solidify the designs.
RESPONSIVE WIREFRAMES
Once I had my desktop designs finalized, I created low-fidelity responsive wireframes for mobile and tablet screens so users would be able to access the website across different devices and still have a consistent user experience. The responsive screens are created for the homepage and the insurance wizard for now only. The biggest change for the responsive design came for the insurance wizard screens, the progress bar was substituted for simple text in order to fit on a mobile screen.
Brand
BRANDING KAUS
I wanted to keep Kaus’ brand identity in mind when redesigning their logo and site’s visual design. Since the intent was to reach a wider, more youthful audience, I wanted a logo that was simple, yet bold, and easily recognizable. Working from the momentum of the logo, I created Kaus' color palette, graphics, fonts, and other site elements.
HOMEPAGE
Once the wireframes were finalized, I combined them with the elements of the style guide to create high-fidelity screens that allowed users to obtain an insurance quote in a variety of ways from the homepage. For experienced users, I wanted to give an immediate option to start the quote process as soon as you land on the site so my hero section focused only on that.
For beginners who weren’t quite sure how to approach, I put in the insurance wizard section around the halfway point so they had the opportunity to read about Kaus beforehand. The section would alert beginners that they had a resource if they were unsure of where to start.
RESPONSIVE UI
With the convenience of cell phones, making sure the site can be adapted to any device creates a positive user experience that builds confidence when exploring the site. Everything was able to adapt easily from desktop to mobile without needing to leave out any of the illustrations. Instead of stacking each of the customer reviews, I used a carousel so users could quickly swipe through each one.
INSURANCE WIZARD
When designing the insurance wizard, I kept it simple with basic form fields since the focus was to gain all the information needed from users wanting to obtain a quote. Each section of the wizard asks for the necessary information needed to give the user a quote without dragging out the process. Based on my research, wizards with an abundance of steps and a lack of progress bars were pain points and unmotivating for users.
GETTING A QUOTE
When designing the insurance wizard, I kept it simple with basic form fields since the focus was to gain all the information needed from users wanting to obtain a quote. Each section of the wizard asks for the necessary information needed to give the user a quote without dragging out the process. Based on my research, wizards with an abundance of steps and a lack of progress bars were pain points and unmotivating for users.
Prototype
USABILITY TESTING
When building the prototype, I limited the functions only to three tasks that my persona would be completing to test the homepage and quote process:
Begin the quote process from the homepage.
Use the insurance wizard to get a personalized quote.
Complete the task flow of filling out a quote form to get a quote.
Here is the final prototype with changes implemented after testing.
User Feedback
ITERATIONS
I documented my findings after testing the prototype using an affinity map to organize those insights and establish any notable patterns. Those were then organized into categories where I could envision potential iterations needed:
Clarify wording for one of the questions in the insurance wizard so users have a better understanding of what is being asked.
Include a button where users can view a PDF file of their quote once they have completed their purchase
Reword title for the insurance wizard section on the homepage so that it reads more like a quiz feature to help beginners instead of just a statement of help available to users.
NEXT STEPS
I learned just how important it was to be thorough during the research phase of this project and how it lays the base for design decisions. While I did receive positive feedback overall, I’d love to be able to do a second round of user testing with the changes made according to user feedback. With that second round of testing, possibly one more round of iterations so that the project could be handed off to developers.