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Reducing ambiguties on product features to build fast

SkillPrompt 2024

Design Strategy

Hi-Fi Wireframe

Prototyping

Overview

With a dual focus on insurance agents & admins, we carefully designed solutions that addressed challenges in policy comparison, tracking purchases, and commission reconciliation.

As a product designer, I contributed to user story creation and led design with high-fidelity wireframe prototypes integrated with real data, laying the foundation for data validation and stakeholder alignment on product scope and requirements. We were able to save development preparation time, explore optimum flow to compare insurance policies, manage commission reconciliation and settle payments.

Company

Skillprompt, Client Project

2 Designer / 1 PM / 1 Engineer / 1 Client

3 Months, 2024

What I did?

Strategic Design Planning

Information Architecture

Hi-Fi Wireframe, Prototyping

User Story Curation

Context

Why we are building it?

Insurance agents were bogged down by fragmented, manual processes that significantly hindered efficiency in purchasing insurance policies for overseas visitors.

Agents struggled with manual processes for comparing and purchasing policies, which were fragmented across multiple provider websites.

Agents lacked tools for managing and reconciling commissions, relying on spreadsheets and emails that often led to errors.

This meant agents had to complete purchases on provider websites, and reconciliation required uploading crunching monthly reports from various insurance providers in excel sheets.

"To give insurance agents a platform to manage and purchase Overseas Visitor Health Cover (OVHC) policies."

Client's Vision

Client had a significant(2000+) agency network, mainly based in India and APAC region. Similarly, with the OSHC, there was a business opportunity for reducing the operational cost in manually processing of the overseas visitor health cover(OVHC) and with a product offering, we can extend the network.

It wasn't easy ride with a newly formed distributed team, unfamiliar with agile methodologies and design thinking approach. As, I will explain through this case study, how we traversed through this project as a team to come out of the tunnel with renewed approach to build confidence and combine short term delivery with long-term vision.

Problem

Finding the right thing to build,

As the web platform was for the already connected agents from the parent platform, besides the agents pain points as I have stated in why we are building it?, we knew less about the admin side of the business.

The two questions which were significant to answer, for finding the right thing to build were;

How might we the process of policy purchasing easier for agents ?

How might we make the process of commission reconciliation easier and faster for admins ?

We also needed a flexible way of validating solutions and materializing product features, use cases, and the project scope in general.

The last project was done with tasks in github, team was doing weekly demo sessions, with distributed source of truth like product roadmap, documents on teams, continuous syncing calls needed with changing requirements which affected overall team efficiency.

Because of the absence of structured project management practices, I convinced the team for adoption of agile practices using Jira as the primary tool. Since, we have worked with the client before, we knew the importance of a structured framework.

Process

With the use of user stories, we fixed the high-level requirements and came up with the scope for the v1.

First draft of user stories were created after doing stakeholder interviews, contextual interviews with agents and competitor analysis. With multiple iteration in wireframe prototype both lo-fi and with data, we finalised datasets and modular components based on the existing design system.

With simple yet effective information architecture based upon the user stories. We identified core features, finalised the top level navigation and the prominent activities around it. I collaborated with stakeholders for refining the user stories and prioritising them.

Prioritizing features and user stories.

Main features and main tasks of agents.
Admin have products configuration and reconciliation of commissions.
Main features and main tasks of agents.

I led an unconventional yet strategic approach by investing significant upfront effort in creating comprehensive high-fidelity wireframes prototype with data.

This decision was driven by three main factors:

Complex data relationships between policies, commissions, and reconciliations

Need for precise alignment between multiple stakeholders

Collaboration from early stage was needed because of new product exploration.

Example of compare page transitions form lo-fi to hi-fi.

Example of modal transitions from lo-fi to hi-fi.

Some components used in hi-fi wireframing.

Now, lets look at two of the user stories, which are key to the platform.

Solution

1. As an agent, I want to compare policies side-by-side and seamlessly proceed to purchase, so that I can select best policy for the client.

Comparing policies was initiated after getting initial details, then selecting policies to compare, compare them side by side. Which was straight forward. But the difficult part was where to get the policies and its updated details.

Also, for the actual purchase, the initial entry was used so that, agent won’t have to insert the basic details again. With optional inputs, agent are able to make an entry.

Lo-fi Wireframe Compare flow form homepage helped for initial conversations with the stakeholders to set the expectations..

Agent selects policies to compare.

Agent compare page, with collapsible table showing policy coverage informations.

Hi-fi wireframe prototype video of compare flow with purchase entry.

But without API services from insurance providers, we decided to provide admins a way to curate products in the platform with full control.

It gave agents curated insurance products with updated information. In addition, it implemented the insights from the interview with agents.

Agents say they compare the products in provider websites, but in practice experienced agents have few preferred providers which gave them more commission.

The real need was the agent wanted a unified platform which manages the commission and purchase of policies.

Product CMS, with provider management for admins.

Product page with provider management for admins.

Agents were tracking commissions in spreadsheets, the estimated commissions would be generated and settled at the end of the month. Because the individual providers statement would come every month, and it varried depending on the providers.

So, the commission reconciliation was done in admin part, agents only receive commission details and check the invoices for individual payout.

Commission page for agents.

Individual transaction details.

2. As an admin, I want to track and reconcile commissions monthly, so I can ensure accurate payouts to agents.

Monthly reconciliation was central to managing commissions. Providers sent CSV reports containing policy data, which the platform reconciled with purchase entries logged by agents. Automation handled matches, but manual intervention was necessary for discrepancies

Why It Was Critical

Manual reconciliation posed a risk of errors and delayed payments.

Automating and structuring the process improved admin efficiency and agent trust.

Unreconciled commissions with respective signifiers, denoted by color and icon.

Admin wanted to assign agencies, either searching for agencies or assign to self.

Manual reconciliation by assigning an Agent or to self, self-meaning the admins also purchase policies.

But, decision of automation of reconcilation process, generated 2 cases with subcases where we can't match the commissions to the agencies policy records.

Human intervention for Unreconciled Commissions, which are associated to unverified policies partially or fully, or which can't be recognised are manually reconcile based on data matched. Membership ID - Provider Insurance ID, Membership Name.

When the commission is associated to an unverified policy fully.
When only membership name matched, but there can be multiple entries.
When there is a human error
When a commission is not recognised, we can’t match the policies in our platform.

If it matches, with unverified policy fully, it was easy to reconcile.

When there is human error.

When we can’t match with the policies in our platform.

Use of flags and requesting further information was explored for human error,

It helped for dispute resolution and two way communication regarding the policy. Where agents are requested to provide more details for the policy. Also, it solved the problem of unverified policies.

Final flow, where policies are flagged with a reason and resolution method for agents.

Agent need to edit the policy to remove the flag.

Impact

Seamlessly translating user stories into high-fidelity wireframes and prototypes integrated with real data, laying the foundation for data validation, align stakeholders, reduce ambiguity, and accelerate the product development lifecycle.

With the use of user stories we fixed the high level requirements and come up with the scope for the v1. With the help of the low-fi and hi-fi wireframe prototypes we finalised datasets and modular components based on the existing design system.

Accelerated Development Readiness: Validated datasets embedded in wireframes reduced database design preparation time by 30%.

Enhanced Reconciliation Accuracy: Optimised workflows expected to decrease unresolved commission cases, improving payout timelines and dispute handling.

Streamlined Collaboration: High-fidelity prototypes with real data cut cross-team alignment meetings, fostering efficiency.

Key Learnings

Strong UX design principles with effective team leadership can transform both product and process.

Early stakeholder alignment prevented costly pivots, technical and design debt and clear vision accelerated team productivity.