My Role
I was a user researcher and UX Designer in a team with two other UX designers, In just two weeks, we conducted usability tests, user interviews, prototyped, tested, and wireframed 2 solutions that addressed user needs while considering business and technical constraints
The Challenge
WatchTower approached us with two main objectives: 1) To validate and improve its’ current product; 2) To ideate and prioritize future features.
Product Evaluation
The WatchTower beta platform is an SaaS tool that takes uploaded proposals, extracts key data, and presents the proposals of each carrier side by side. To analyze the current product we conducted usability tests, a heuristic evaluation, and a card sorting exercise.
We conducted usability tests with 4 of our interview participants. We provided 3 main tasks and asked each participant to think-aloud while navigating through the platform. Below is a snapshot of our findings:
User Research
At the company’s inception, our clients had personally interviewed nearly 40 brokers. This information was as valuable as a starting point, however the clients’ questions were very surface-level and did not dig into motivations and emotions.
Through our clients’ network and personal circles, we additionally interviewed 4 brokers and a subject matter expert to validate results from the previous interviews and to further explore how brokers are managing the RFP process.
We created a consumer journey map to illustrate the user’s’ thoughts and emotions throughout the RFP process. The journey map was also extremely helpful in simplifying a complicated RFP process into just 5 steps. As the map indicates below, a brokers frustrations are throughout the RFP process, not just when reviewing and comparing proposals.
Overall, our research indicated that the users biggest frustrations with the RFP process originated from the back and forth discussion with carriers. There is almost always miscommunication between brokers and carriers, which leads to ongoing proposal edits, delays in the RFP process, and missed expectations.
Due to these miscommunications, brokers often spend an unnecessary amount of time correcting errors and feel frustrated keeping track of these changes. WatchTower solves the problem of standardizing language which alleviates some of the back and forth communication, but this only part of the larger issue.
Ideation
Although our vision was to create a holistic tool, our timeline required us to prioritize what to work on in the immediate future. Balancing users’ needs and client requests, we chose to focus our ideation on three main concepts: 1) Creating customized views of information, 2) Editing proposals in the system, 3) History of client
Wireframe & Prototype
Below are final wireframes of a few key screens. Click here to see a clickable prototype.
