Nan Shan Life Insurance | 2020
Elevating Nan Shan Insurance App for Policyholders to Manage Insurance
Enhance the app experience for policyholders to manage their insurance more effectively and efficiently.
App Design | Insurance
The Context
Nan Shan Life Insurance is a major Taiwanese insurer, serving over 6 million policyholders. It is committed to sustainable growth, customer-centric solutions, and technological innovation in Taiwan's insurance sector.
The Problem
The extremely low adoption rate (1%) and a mediocre App Store rating (3.3/5.0) revealed critical user experience gaps. Policyholders consistently struggled to access policy details and track insurance claims within the app, leading most to rely heavily on offline services, a process that is both inefficient and lacks spontaneity.
The Impact
The user rating increased significantly from 3.3 to 4.2, with positive feedback highlighting a simple interface, clear information, and high readability.
My Role
UX Design, UX Research, Information Architecture, Persona, Workshop Facilitation
Team
2 UX Designers (including me),
1 UXR Director, 1 Design Lead,
2 UX Researchers, 1 UI Designer,
1 Product Manager
Tools
Sketch, Zeplin, Keynote, Google Sheets
Timeline
8 months
Status
Shipped
The Solution
Balancing user needs and business goals, I redesigned the app's information architecture with easy navigation, transparent personalized information, and intuitive flows for insurance management.
01 Define problems
Policyholders faced difficulties locating their insurance information and tracking their claims
User Problems: Poor app navigation, outdated information, and limited features drive users to paper policies and agents, leading to issues like lost documents, claim delays and neglect by agents.
Business Problems: Despite its goal to attract younger customers and optimize human resources, the app has an adoption rate of less than 1%, with monthly active users (MAU) dropping from 35,000 to 25,000 since April 2019.
Monthly Active Users & Weekly Active Users (Source: Nan Shan Insurance)
02 Competitive analysis
Most insurance apps focus on providing services rather than sales or customer relationship management
I analyzed 6 mobile apps from leading insurance companies, conducting a comprehensive evaluation that included feature and focus comparisons. This research enhanced our team's understanding of market trends and industry strategies, leading Nan Shan Life Insurance's management to set a clear business objective.
Competitive analysis
App focus comparison
Project goals
User goal: Manage their insurance policies more easily and efficiently on mobile devices.
Business goal: Boost adoption rates by offering diverse app features.
03 Stakeholder alignment
Align all 11 departments with interviews and prioritization workshops
With the business goal set, defining project scope became challenging. The project involved 27 managers from 11 departments, each with unique KPIs. This led to scope misalignment, with every department pushing for their services, resulting in over 100 potential features.
To align priorities, we interviewed 27 managers and 2 insurance agents, and held two prioritization workshops using techniques like the $100 Test. This streamlined cross-departmental communication and reduced the design scope from over 100 to 50 core features.
I planned and facilitated the prioritization workshop
We utilized the $100 test technique to prioritize features
04 User interview
Users found it difficult to access the most relevant and latest information on the app
We interviewed 8 Nan Shan Life policyholders who:
Use mobile apps to manage insurance policies
Have high or moderate digital literacy
Manage their own or their family’s policies
Clients attended user interviews as observers
Participants categorized services using Card Sorting
During user interviews, we employed card sorting and open-ended questions to understand needs and behavior of 8 participants. Key questions included:
What did you do on the app last time?
What do you typically use the app for, and why is it important?
When and how do you usually manage your insurance?
The key insights are:
Key Findings 01
Users feel anxious about not seeing the updated status of their insurance.
Key Finding 02
Users struggle to access the details of insurance policies when emergency.
Key Finding 03
Filing insurance claims on the app is complicated and time-consuming.
Key Findings 04
Instant notifications is important when the status of insurance policies change.
05 Persona
Identify goals and needs for family-oriented and individual policyholders
Based on user research, we created two personas:
Persona 01 - Eva Chang
Bio: 45-year-old financial manager with moderate digital literacy
Goals: Prioritizes supporting and caring for their family.
Persona 01 - Family Guardian
Persona 02 - Willy Li
Bio: 28-year-old business analyst with high digital literacy
Goals: Values independence and self-reliance.
Persona 02 - Insurance Novice
06 Ideation
Design a streamlined, intuitive insurance experience for Family Guardian
After aligning with management and analyzing customer characteristics, I moved forward with the Family Guardian (Persona 01), our primary persona.
By asking the question, "How might we enable policyholders to effortlessly access personalized and real-time information, ensuring a sense of ease?" I started with reconstructing the app's information structure to improve navigation.
Bottom tab bar
Accessible with one hand and focused on key actions.
Hamburger menu
Can hold many options, but reduces discoverability.
Full-screen navigation
Good for tasks, but lacks context and require more steps.
After choosing the bottom tab bar as our navigation pattern, I then brainstormed ideas and created low-fi and mid-fi wireframes for the homepage and main user flows, focusing on the needs of family-oriented users.
Wireframes of the homepage & Notes
Wireframes of the insurance landing page
07 Final design
Nan Shan Insurance App redesign: Putting policy management in the hands of the user
In the redesign, I streamlined navigation and core user flows, enabling policyholders to easily modify policies, pay premiums, or file claims immediately upon entering the app. I then collaborated with the UI Designer to refine the final design, ensuring a user-friendly and clean interface.
Keep users updated on the progress of payments and claims
The new homepage offers claims progress and a personal information overview for easy tracking and real-time updates.
Provide individual and family coverage overview and personalized advice
Users can add family members for a comprehensive view of their insurance and get personalized advice.
Guide users in step-by-step insurance evaluation
Users can now easily import family members' policies using a step-by-step guide for a complete insurance evaluation.
The Impact
Happier Users, Better Communication at Nan Shan Life Insurance
User impact: The redesign led to a notable increase in user satisfaction, with the app rating improving from 3.3 to 4.2. User feedback emphasized the simpler interface, clearer information, and enhanced readability.
Business impact: Interviews and prioritization workshops across 11 departments resulted in improved cross-departmental communication within Nan Shan Life Insurance, a company of over 4,000 employees.
"I'm really impressed with the new app! It's simple, easy to read, and I can see the policy status now." - A Nan Shan Insurance Policyholder
Reflection
Lessons I learned: creativity, focus, and addressing unintended consequences
Stakeholder alignment can be creative: I initially assumed aligning stakeholders would be challenging and serious, involving many high-level executive. Stakeholder alignment felt stiff in the beginning, so we got creative with engaging UX in workshops, and fostered actual consensus.
Focus on one primary user audience: Companies often include all user groups as "target users." In this redesign, we learned that focusing on the primary user group allowed us to tailor the experience to their specific goals more effectively.
Consider design side effect: Our app redesign potentially threatened insurance agents by enabling policyholders to manage insurance more independently. We addressed this by interviewing agents and including them in workshops to communicate the app's role and how it could assist their work.
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