The Project:
Convert an agency-designed flow into our design system.
Time frame: 6 months
My Role:
For this project I had the responsibilities of a UX Researcher, Project Manager, and Interaction Designer.
Pre-agency Work:
My company decided to work with an agency to try to reimagine the auto quote experience. Internally a group of us worked on an idea of something better than a traditional form. We joked about a “Tinder-style” quote process where you could simply swipe left and right to answer some of the quote questions. The UI designer and I sketched up some high-level wireframes to look at the concept. The more we looked at it, the more we thought it could lead us somewhere.
Working with the agency
We took our idea to an agency we had worked with in the past. While we had the capability to fully flesh out the idea, we were short on resources. Our management also wanted to see if we could get some newer non-GEICO-ized ideas that would be different from what we had developed in the past.
We worked with the agency for about 5 weeks, with deliverables every week. I had a dual role on the project, both project manager and UX researcher. I would keep up tabs with the deliverables, prototype out the designs and then usability test that week’s work. That way we got iterative feedback on the designs.
Delivered Project:
What we had delivered looked great. It tested well in usability testing. Now the final test was to put it out in the real world
The rework:
Just a few minor… minor things to work out. First of all, our current forms looked like this:
And the new design didn’t quite fit into our current style guide.
Annnnnd the development team couldn’t build the whole application all at once.
That’s when my team took the lead on the project. I worked with the development team to figure out how much they could reasonably commit to and that would still let us see if the project would be successful. We agreed on the first page of the application. We then had to convert the designs into the same style guide that the team was working on. I worked with our UI designer to make sure that the experience and copy worked within our design guideline as well as our brand guideline. We also had the challenge of transitioning the single question per page flow into the traditional flow.
Implementation:
Both of us then worked with the development team as they built out the designs. We had to make some concessions on items such as a lack of a progress bar because they had a framework already in place and these pages were simply built on top of the existing page.
We wanted to introduce this new experience and train the user how to interact with the interface. All of the screens were made so that there was no scrolling on an iPhone 5 or larger screen.
We then gave a confirmation screen that reinforced what they just performed.
The questions continued using the swiping motion as you fill out the form.
Since we couldn't build out the whole flow, I created some copy that would feel like a natural transition from this one question per page feel into the traditional form. We d.idn't want the customers to drop off due to the change in experience
The full flow
The Results:
This experience was originally supposed to just be an A/B test, but has remained live due to it's great success.
Our main metrics for this experiment were completion of the first page of the quote. Basically, were more our customers getting through the same set of questions as the traditional form.
The answer: A resounding YES!
We saw a 4 point shift in completion on those first pages.
We did also look at secondary metrics, like the all-important quote finish and ultimately buying percentage. Both of those went up significantly, even though we only changed the first part of the application.
We have already created designs for the next page, but it is currently unscheduled due to other projects taking proirity.