The brief
In early 2008 ING launched the first car insurance simulation in Belgium. Before this, if any user needed insurance they would have to directly go to the bank branch or the broker.
At Allianz, graphility was commissioned to do web design, interaction design and help with banners and advertising as well. After ING’s launch of car insurance simulation, Allianz too decided to counter it with their own service in the market. Allianz decided to do their own module of car insurance simulation.
graphility steps in
graphility’s Design director Hector Hurtado was assigned to the project. The key difference between ING and Allianz’s approach was ING is a bank with multiple branches in different places. ING do bank-insurance where people can go to the bank and get insurance from ING or from someone who is their partner, in either case, ING is the entry point. Another way to get insurance is via brokers. Brokers are supposed to be more independent and neutral and they provide customers with the best possible option based on their needs not particularly tied to any entity. Allianz work with brokers only. they do not have a branch as they decided that having a branch was costly hence they operated only via brokers.
In the Allianz flow, they ask you several questions and propose you a quote. Once you have accepted a quote they will direct you to the appropriate broker. In the questions asked to the user, the address is attained and the simulator suggests a broker in the user’s vicinity. The user can go to the broker with the quote he attained by using the simulation online.
Prior to committing to a car insurance application, Allianz Belgium entrusted graphility with User Experience, competitive, and functional analysis — culminating inflow, wireframes, and an interactive mockup. Concept and interaction design for an online car insurance application. In 3 steps, the app calculates the user’s premium repayment, generates a PDF copy, then directs him or her to the nearest partner broker for signature.
Our Design director Hector Hurtado started with the benchmarking but there was not much competition available in the market except for ING to do the same. He studies ING’s screen flows, how each element worked, kind of reverse engineer it. The idea was to make a better product. ING did their flow in 10 screens, whereas graphility decided to make things easier for the customers by implementing the appropriate flow with 3 screens. In one screen, for example, it was about learning about the customer identity. The next page was about the car details and in the next screen asked the customer about the kind of coverage he was looking for and how much was he willing to pay. This screen redirected to the final screen which said: “here is your quote if you are interested please select your broker”.
The challenge
The challenge for graphility while creating this product was the fact that Allianz, like many of its products had already marketed its product with the tagline “As easy as 1,2,3”, indicating their insurance simulation was easy and complete. The challenge Hector challenged himself to match the actual app with the product tagline and designed the product in 3 screens. This also indicated that the customers were not misled with the tagline.
Allianz was happy with the product and appreciated with graphility’s efforts. We had closed down on the essential questions to be asked and categorised them wisely to create the same product in just 3 screens! The flow of ING was available only on the desktop. Allianz wanted to make its product responsive by making it compatible with the tablet. This was a great initiative because it allowed the brokers to do the simulation together with the customers during a meeting. Every broker has its own branding, so what graphility did to create a customization panel which allowed the brokers to change the colours of the interface. Hence this way both Allianz and the brokers could maintain their branding palet. This was a huge selling point of the product that worked out well for everybody.
Concept design
This was basically a concept design, a term which was not very relevant at that point. graphility was given the challenge, we decided it would be done in 3 steps. We determined which questions were useful which were not. Then we started creating the screens. First, it was the wireframes, trying to get all the details before going into colours, designs, visuals etc. Hence first the essence, then we tested the essence with customers, brokers etc.
Once everybody agreed on the essence we moved into the design and colouring. The final coding was done by an agency. We sent the whole package to them which helped them to code. In this part of the project for Hector, it was more about project coordination, checking with the agency if they were coding it right, the product was shaping up well.
The entire concept design was handled by Hector alone.
Duration
The product was designed, implemented and launched in 10 months. In January 2009 Allianz’s product was in the market.