Understanding the problem

We knew our current renters insurance integration wasn’t working, but we didn’t necessarily know why. Along with the product manager and UX content designer, we gathered our questions, created a research plan, and got to work! Our primary research goals were to better understand the insurance space, learn about our user goals and needs, and uncover pain points with our existing journey.

✨ We learned the process of requiring renters insurance was time-consuming, manual, and fragmented for property managers.

As a property manager…

• It’s time consuming to send reminders to tenants who have not sent me their proof of insurance.

• I have no way of knowing if a renters insurance policy is canceled once it’s been verified.

• It’s time consuming to verify proof of insurance for each and every tenant.

• I have no easy and consolidated way to track renters insurance policies for my tenants.

Ideate

With initial discovery research and problem statements in hand, we were ready to start brainstorming solutions. Users were looking for a tool that could save them time, while providing their owners the reassurance that their properties were covered.

Our design vision 💫

Fully automate the renters insurance requirement process so property managers can protect their owner’s properties while focusing on what matters most. 

1. Tenants are notified of policy requirement through an automatic email 

2. Resident purchases policy through their Resident Center

3. Policy is automatically recorded in Buildium 

4. Property manager is notified if the policy is canceled or expired

Crafting user flows ↣

Mapping out the end-to-end user experience helped us share our high-level approach with stakeholders in order to help align and collaborate before continuing to the design phase.  

Leading collaborative design workshops 👥

I invited engineers, product managers and UXers to attend collaborative design workshops where we crafted how might we statements as a group, brainstormed solutions for each and voted on our favorite. This helped the entire team feel included in the process while sparking great discussion.

Prototype

Prototype, validate, repeat. This phase consisted of daily whiteboard sessions with our product manager and content strategist, weekly calls with our integration partner and design reviews with our team of engineers.

Wireframing the solutions

I started by wireframing the workflow so I could get a sense of all the pieces that needed to be in each step of the experience. At this point in the process, I worked heavily with engineering to talk through technical considerations, level of effort and feasibility.

Checking out the competition

By looking at other renters insurance experiences, we were able to compile a list of what users expected out of a purchase flow—from what information was presented to UI patterns used.

Validating the designs

We consistently validated designs as we we moved from bare bones wireframes to high fidelity mock ups.

Developing the designs.

No matter how hard I try to make the design details of each story as comprehensive as possible, something always comes up during development. During this phase, I worked with our designers on a daily basis to identify missing interactions, error validation and edge cases. I reviewed each and every front-end story to ensure what was built aligned with the Invision prototype.

Results and takeaways

Since the implementation of this project, we’ve drastically increased our revenue, our feature adoption and customer time saved.

Results 6 months after release…

Key takeaways ✨

• The answer is always no unless you ask… 

  Instead of taking what our partner told us to do at face value, we asked questions and were constantly working with them to improve the experience for our customers. 
  
  

• Take your time doing discovery, it’s pays off! 

  There was pressure from the organization to develop designs quickly, however our emphasis on discovery helped us develop the right experience for our customers.
  
  

• Dedicate time to design better project management processes 

  Action items, open questions, designs and learning were scattered throughout our emails, slack channels and google docs. If I were to do it again, I would have taken the time in the beginning of the project to consolidate our communication channels in order to make us more efficient as a team. 

Sharing our story

Renters insurance became a popular water cooler topic and Buildians were excited to learn more about our approach. Felicity, our content strategist, and I created a case study that sprawled across the office’s walls to help educate the organization on our UX process.