Viget was approached by the growth incubator at Progressive to help them create a life insurance product that more accurately reflected customers' needs. They knew they wanted to target a younger audience, but needed to validate their assumptions – and weren't sure how to message and launch their product.
We helped their team formulate a foundational product strategy, conducted moderated research sessions to more accurately understand where we would bring value, and designed the product's UI.
I led the design production of the project, focusing on interface design, prototyping, and parts kit assembly.
Our initial moderated research sessions and user surveys confirmed to us that the concept of life insurance coverage is confusing for a lot of people. The value isn't clear, and acquiring a policy feels intimidating.
As we started to transition into strategy and design, it became clear that the product needed to be something other than traditional term or whole life insurance. To stand out in an already crowded marketplace, it needed to be flexible, easy to acquire, and easy to understand.
Once we landed on product concepts to test, I hit the ground running with design explorations, ideating through many different concepts quickly. We wanted a large variety of visual concepts and messaging to test with users, in order to gain insight about both the product direction and visual branding that would roll out upon launch.
Our initial round of testing included concepts focused on equal partner coverage, whole family coverage, flexible term coverage, and mortgage coverage.
Our second round of testing focused on a concierge service that would help customers decide how much coverage they needed as they age – as well as bereavement insurance.
The third round of testing focused on refining the concept of a flexible term policy.
Having tested many different forms of messaging and visual design concepts in our moderated sessions, we concluded that flexible coverage was the direction the product should go in.
Many individuals and families don't need the same life insurance coverage over 30 years – many people spend large chunks of their life either over or under insured. Customers should be able to increase or decrease their coverage based on their needs at that point in their life (getting married, having children, paying for college, taking care of relatives, etc).
I designed and prototyped a quote calculator that allows customers to customize what their coverage (and monthly premium) should be based on their own evolving life responsibilities and needs.
Our last moderated test with users was on the final quote coverage summary page: a customizable slider approach to determine their own quote, versus a more clear-cut approach. Users preferred the predetermined 3 option concept to avoid more decision-making.
As of September 2022, the product is available in the state of Ohio at progressivelife.com.
