We know insurance…. it’s all we do
From SoCal to Upstate NY to the Midwest….
After joining BTS in Des Moines out in the midwest, I received many questions from my friends and family back home, in school, and even in the midwest: why come to Des Moines? You don’t know anyone there. You have never been to the Midwest. Why come to BTS?
This was a question I asked myself over the last few days, reflecting on the end of my internship. I won’t deny the fact that initially I did have reservations relocating to the midwest for a summer. It’s not exactly the most exciting scene, and it is far from home. However, looking back now, all I can say is “why not?” I’ve absolutely loved my two month in the midwest: the people, the food, the lifestyle, and of course the city. Safe to say, I’ve met some incredible people out here, chased some crazy experiences I would have never dreamt of, and grown as an UX designer.
Why Berkley Technology Services?
Of course, there were other reasons I came out to BTS. Not only were they most accommodating to my travel needs and housing, but throughout the recruitment process they seemed like a company I would genuinely like to work at. They provided an in-person learning experience, and presented me a white-boarding question that gave me a good idea of the people they wanted: problem-solvers. Those were the exactly the kind of people I wanted to be surrounded by.
UX!!!
Now, let’s get into the nitty-gritty technical aspects of what I worked on. Projects involved revamping the Berkley Public Entity Website to better reflect the professional image of an insurance company, designing logos and help-center visuals, iterating design flows for a portal, and finally(what consumed my last three weeks) utilizing design systems, atomic design, and components to convert screens and modals in a more efficient manner.
Whereas, I can not present much of my work, as most of it is confidential to the company itself, I will discuss some of the things I learned.
Trades and Cost: Economical Design
Within the vast industry lessons I received, one of the most memorable ones was the economical/business side of UX design. Time equals money, and the more complicated a design is, the more engineering effort it is going to take to implement, and thus the more costly it is going to be. When presented with two designs that achieve the same solution, the one that is more feasible and lucrative, is the one that requires less engineering effort.
For example, I worked on a portal feature for requesting multiple endorsements pictured below. The solution on the left-hand side details a queue feature that basically adds endorsement after endorsement into a queue and has the user fill out the same modals consecutively until they are read to submit. On the other hand, the solution on the right implements a replicate feature that lets you submit a proposal and presents the option to automatically replicate the previous version in the next endorsement.
As you can see, both processes result in a solution to the multiple endorsement issue. However, the one on the left requires much more engineering as the queue can accumulate quickly and needs a bulk-load of programming. Furthermore, if there is a bug or error, the entire queue can be wiped out, and thus the user loses all of their information. The one on the right is more efficient, displays less graphics at a time, and avoids the bug issue. Thus, it is more economical and the feature we decided to move forward with.
Website Revamp
With the website revamp, I first conducted user research, constructing a competitor matrix and executing user interviews to identify good and bad designed patterns being used across the fields and our target audiences(which included: insured, brokers, and potential hires). Then, I made personas to better understand our target audiences.
Following this, was making an information hierarchy chart to organize design flow and prioritize certain pieces of information, as well as crafting a style guide to keep branding consistent and use company colors.
The problem statement I arrived at:
How might we…support new vision and direction, attract top talent, and have the best-of-breed website in the public entity insurance space?
Getting to work on the project, several changes were in line. Here we can compare the old version(on the left hand side) to the new version(on the right hand side).
Header
For the header, I wanted to eliminate unnecessary web estate by replacing texts with buttons and making it smaller to eliminate white space. The header is also now sticky(sticks to the header whenever a user is strolling). You can also see that some of the headers in the nav bar were combined and replaced to make sub-categories more concise and simple.
Claims
A huge mission we had was to change the previously cartoon-charged marketing campaign to stock photos to better reflect the professionalism that Berkley Public Entity has to offer. You can see the drastic difference in tone system, as well as the inclusion of several buttons to redirect users efficiently and provide more care to user’s needs.
Location
Finally, I wanted to thrive to improve usability. In this instance, you can see we simply have a list of locations. On the right-hand side, a description is labeled “Our Office Locations,” as well as interactive map in which users can see their proximity to office locations. This is helpful for potential hires looking to see if they can work in-office, or even insureds looking to talk to an underwriter in-person. Either way, it improves usability and provides that extra attention to care and details that can benefit our customers.
Although, these were only a few of the changes I made in the larger picture, you can access the updated website at:https://www.berkleypublicentity.com/
Design Systems
My job here was essentially to convert old screens to a new design system’s standards and auto-layout everything. I was to follow follow atomic design practice and pull from master style guide. Although utilizing design-systems was painstakingly tedious, I was able to become more efficient throughout time, and it was easy to see how many long-term impacts they can have.
In the end, the improvements were tremendous. Not only was everything interactive and responsive, but long-term impacts were astounding related to:
- Streamline design to dev handoffs
- Keep pages, styles, and themes, consistent across the board
- Long-term efficiency in editing existing designs
- Prepping new designers and making the onboarding process smooth
Thinking Outside the Box
Finally, a unique problem I was presented with was crafting a visual for a help-center number for Berkley Technology Services. Initially, they wanted me to simply change the image of a woman to a man, change some colors and text on the internal website. However, my mentor and I took a step back and looked at the larger picture. What about the people who don’t have access to internet, or can’t login on the computer when they need help? Would having the phone number on the internal website be helpful then?
Then we started brainstorming other ideas. How about having the phone number in the work environment? But what about the people seeking help virtually? How about the phone number on a sticker attached to the computer? We decided this would be the most effective as essentially anyone with access to a company computer could easily call the help-center for assistance.
Although this was a small task, it really let me exercise my problem solving abilities and think outside the box.
Conclusion
Going back to my intro, not only have I grown as an UX designer — more importantly, living on my own in a completely new city, working for a completely new company, not knowing anyone, I have also grown as an individual.
I’ve learned that I like living on my own, and of course, I am extremely grateful for BTS for taking me as an intern and offering me these incredible opportunities. Much love — Carl.
