PROBLEM STATEMENT:
The company had traditionally focused on internally oriented solutions and human relationships to deliver quality service to its customers. However, as the industry and customer expectations evolved, the old methods became neither scalable nor profitable. Thus, the company needed to transform people, processes, and technology in order to effectively serve both its current and future customers.
Without UX resources or a user-centered mentality, the organization was active but struggled to understand value delivery and identify real problems to solve. Furthermore, as we progressed on our transformation journey, we lacked standards, accountability, and best practices for both user understanding (research) and developing user-focused digital experiences.
RESULTS:
~5million a year in savings by switching from projects to dedicated teams with user-centricity
- Improved Time To Market and Cycle Time
- Improved ROI and OKR alignment for product improvements
- Improved Voice of Customer / Feedback Loops
- Improved Employee Experience
- Validation of user-centered problems to solve
- Repeatable, Reusable Design Language System (savings TBD)
- Teams leveraging Design Thinking to solve feature problems
- Use of personas and user journeys for understanding and product improvements
High-Level Strategy
By comprehending our present limitations such as resources and systems, understanding our users, and analyzing industry trends and risks, we formulated a three-pronged approach to our overarching digital strategy, aligned with our business objectives. This not only facilitated the communication of our requirements and the establishment of a sustainable pace but also enabled us to set boundaries to effectively meet future business needs.
Optimizing the core played a pivotal role in establishing the framework, as detailed below, allowing us to modernize not only our systems but also our methodologies to better cater to the needs of our existing customers and fulfill employee demands. Progressing into horizon two and undertaking a transformative journey, we initiated the development of an interconnected system of current personas along the value chain. Ultimately, this leading to the creation of an extended system and a redefinition of the value chain, presenting new business opportunities and catering to diverse personas.
Horizon Based Digital Strategy to drive Company Strategy
Experience Framework
Experience Framework
CX Framework: An integral aspect of our journey involved collaborating closely with our business and aligning with our Digital Strategy. We developed, assigned, and guided business stakeholders through an outward-facing approach to defining and delivering work, with a focus on three major verticals: how our users interact with us and how our employee experience supports necessary actions.
Value Prop: Delivering digital capabilities across the entire value chain to help humans... help humans.
UX Vision: [Transforming the insurance experience by creating] Digital experiences which complement Amerisure’s human touch to help navigate the complexities of insurance.
This strategy facilitated an outside-in approach to problem-solving, while also providing the opportunity to concentrate on enhancing both user experiences and business process improvements.
User-Centricity through Agility
In the absence of a unified framework, teams are frequently diverted by a technology-centric focus, with vendors often touting the allure of modern technology and point solutions, thereby creating silos and disrupting processes.
By shifting our perspective, we successfully transitioned our focus from systems to users. This change enabled us to cultivate empathy throughout the end-to-end experience, identify and address broken processes, and establish ownership for a holistic portfolio vision.
By assembling a team of Experience Owners throughout the business and providing them with education on best practices related to experiences, voice of the customer (including personas and user journeys), and product-centric agile teams, we were able to prioritize value delivery in accordance with our strategic goals.
Understanding Experiences versus Systems
Utilizing Agile and Portfolio Management
Design Ops and Scalability
The current work processes and intake were unclear, leading to confusion regarding priorities and leaving teams without a clear vision. In line with our agile journey, we adopted a Safe Agile Lean Kanban system, supplemented by a design runway, to validate which problems to focus on at an epic level. This approach allowed us to conduct necessary research ahead of the teams, minimizing disruptions and maximizing throughput.
This framework treats all work as aligned with each team's goals while aiding in holistic portfolio prioritization in accordance with strategic objectives. Each input was prioritized by the experience owner and channeled through the digital portfolio funnel. Once validated, it was incorporated into a roadmap for execution with proven ROI and alignment with OKRs.
Defining the Process
While validation at the portfolio level was crucial to our success, our delivery teams still required support at the product level to guarantee beautiful and consistent experiences, irrespective of the team delivering the value.
Data to Support the Approach Across the Enterprise
In support of our Experience framework and agile approach, our first major challenge was gaining a fundamental understanding of User Experience (UX) and Design Operations (DesignOps), and how they could be beneficial. Myself and a few others dedicated countless hours to creating educational forums, ranging from all-hands meetings to brown bag sessions, as well as establishing Communities of Practice and providing hands-on training. Through these efforts, we began spreading the message and evangelizing the importance of UX for our end users.
We meticulously developed foundational guiding principles for all participants within the ecosystem, including business stakeholders, product managers, and engineering teams. Simultaneously, we fostered innovation and underscored the shared responsibility for good UX among all stakeholders.
Provided the Tools to be Successful
We not only furnished the necessary resources, platforms, and processes to embrace our new user-centered approach but also ensured that we equipped our teams with the tools needed for success.
To expedite scalability and initiate visible change, we commenced by crafting an initial style guide for all teams to utilize. This guide encompassed principles on UX guidance along with design patterns for shared, public and private components, marking the inception of our pursuit for consistent experiences.
Next, our attention shifted towards crafting a robust design language system within Figma. This system encompassed guidance, patterns, and components, aimed not only at ensuring consistency but also at reducing development time.
Due to limited UX resources, we devised a strategy to optimize their utilization. We facilitated this by providing comprehensive documentation through Confluence and offering direct guidance on when to leverage UX resources throughout the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), particularly if they were not already embedded within the product team.
Results
This approach has improved our time to market as well as over all wait time for new features helping us deliver faster and more acurate business results.
Three Year Roadmap
Evolving experience aligned with real business results
