LifetimeACQUIRE Question Builder
A low-code configuration tool for life insurance carriers to build their own smarter, more flexible insurance applications.
Role
As a design lead on this project, I led all design initiatives, worked with product managers, leadership team (Head of Product & Head of Design), the developer team, and scheduled regular interviews with users and various industry experts.
Timeline
2 years
Team
Design Lead
Product Manager
2 Product Designers
3 Software Engineers
More information
Sureify is a SaaS platform for Life and Annuity companies around the globe.
Life Insurance carriers needed a low-to-no code product to modify digital insurance questionnaires. Initially, Sureify had to hard-code any modification, but ultimate goal was for business users to be able to make changes. We wanted to simplify the process of making changes, reducing the need for engineers and freeing up resources across the organization.
To meet specific needs based on factors like location, language, and age, carriers began requesting customized versions of digital questionnaires. However, collaborating with a Sureify proved to be suboptimal, with a lot of back-and-forth between us and the carrier.
Flow before Acquire Studio
Flow with Acquire Studio
Our goal
Scope and shape the MVP of Acquire Studio to ensure that we’re solving user needs without sinking engineering hours into features that may not be needed. Once properly defined, work with our other product designer to define visual patterns and build out the entire product.
Our users
Users of Acquire Studio are primarily on the carrier side, but potentially also on the Sureify side. The challenge this brings up is how can we build something that can do most of the work, but also not confuse users who have little to no technical background.
The MVP
In this project, the design team team played a crucial role in shaping and defining the work. With the possibility of scope creep being high, we took the lead in setting soft boundaries by creating a diagram and providing context for decisions made from a product and design perspective as the features became clearer.
From an architectural perspective, this product lived within one of Sureify’s pre-existing tools, so we had to work within a pre-determined system. This meant that we had to be strategic about the tweaks we made and consider the patterns we used. We had to balance these constraints with our desire to create a more intelligent and personalized experience.
As our engineers started working ahead of the designers, we had to ensure that they had a clear framework to follow. We handed off railway specs to them, including a defined MVP, as well as our vision for v1 and v2 presuming usage stayed as expected. For example, we used advanced boolean logic around question groups to create a more personalized life insurance application experience. In most life insurance applications currently, the question group logic tends to be basic, but we saw an opportunity to use it to drive a smarter, more personalized experience.
Throughout the project's lifespan over the past 3 years, the scope of the project changed and evolved, and we had to be aware of these changes and adapt accordingly. Additionally, we had to stay vigilant regarding the potential changes to both our Acquire product and the processing of insurance applications in a more digitally-oriented world.
Handling Logic
Over the years, we had to tackle incoming client requirements for more and more complex logic implementations. Which meant we had to tackle different problems with different ways to implement logic, depending on the level of complexity we’d like the business user to be exposed to.
This lead to the development of various solutions, ranging from a simple response triggering a followup question, to what we eventually called “Condition tags” — bundles of more complex logic, abstracted using a name and make it easy for a Studio user to, at a glance, determine simple facts about the applications. (i.e. the applicant is in Texas, they have a specific medical condition, or any combination of those using a simplified form of logical operators).
Condition tags — the ultimate form of configuring logic inside your questionnaire
We developed a user interface that would minimize any syntax errors, so as to make the tool accessible to people who aren’t familiar with code. Something that was just as important was to make the tool functional, so the user would have the possibility of writing what’s essentially a simplified, but powerful “IF” statement.
Mapping responses to legal PDF forms
We created a flow to help out carriers connect the questionnaires they created using Acquire Studio to generate a filled out PDF form at the end of every application. We implemented eSign integrations, as well as various forms of data conversions, so that carries would be able to modify the incoming flow of data and adapt it to whatever the form required.
Responsibilities
- Responsible for end-to-end product design, from ideation alongside Product Managers to communication with developers through hand off
- Design owner on one of the company's core products, producing both its configuration panel (B2B), as well as the end-user applications (B2B2C)
- Implemented a unified cross-brand design system, created and maintained its component library, organized workshops on proper usage for the design team
- Oversaw client implementations for white labeled versions of our core products
- Dramatically improved hand off processes and collaboration between design and development by including engineering in the discovery phase through facilitating workshops and brainstorming sessions, and being involved throughout the entire lifespan of projects
- Launched multiple products working as a core contributor to a tight-knit team alongside product owners and developers
- Redesigned components for mobile and desktop web applications
