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Great Eastern and Hitachi eBworx
Unified Insurance Portal
Designing an integrated portal for a seamless online experience
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Details
Designed 2015
Services
Ethnography Research
Design Thinking
Synthesis Analysis
User Experience Design
Credits
Julee
Yuin Theng
(ISS)
Chinwei
Started back in 1908, Great Eastern Life Assurance is the oldest and the most established insurance company within Singapore and Malaysia, providing insurance coverage for 3 million policyholders.
Prior to this project, their public website, loyalty programme portal as well as their insurance portal was hosted separately on different websites. Great Eastern recognised the need to bring together their services and was looking to integrate and redesign all three platforms so to create a seamless experience for their customers. Together with Hitachi eBworx, we worked towards redesigning their portal for their policyholders.
User Research
To better understand the function of the insurance portal, we looked into existing portals of other insurance companies in the market. We conducted lead-user interviews with participants of various backgrounds and insurance statuses, and using various methods, we were able to gain insight into the needs and wants of users.
From the user testing findings, we developed five personas of current and potential insurance policyholders, each with different goals and behaviours. Out of all five personas, we decided to focus on three personas as they will most likely be regular users of the portal.
Family Protectors
Family Oriented
He takes security and convenience as priority.
Manages the insurance policies for the family
Young Rookies
Young
Young and new to insurance.
Takes convenience as top priority.
Relaxed Guy
Secondary Persona
Generally unconcerned about the status of his insurances.
Prefers personal interations with insurance agents.
OUR DESIGN STRATEGY
Convenience, Transparency, Simplicity, Connectivity
Convenience
We realised that our primary personas were holders of multiple insurance policies, and they needed a convenient way to manage all their policies at once.
"The portal should be intuitive- to prompt what I am lacking, based on my portfolio."
Transparency
The lack of communication and information on the claims process often result in confusion and frustration, hence there was a need to make the process more transparent to the users.
"They don't really tell you what is going on, and the next thing they just send you the check. They don't really tell you which has been claimed which hasn't been claimed."
Simplicity
As there is rise of younger and tech savvy generation of insurance holders who are used to the world under their fingertips,hence there is a need to cater to make the Unified Insurance Portal more simple, easier and faster for them to use.
“User friendly of the website is a given”
Connectivity
Participants with multiple policies expressed great trust in their insurance agents and was willing to entrust all management to them, thus the Unified Insurance Portal then has to either help connect the users to their agents or serve as a replacement.
“I called the agent and said 'I have a newborn daughter, and I need an insurance for her'. And I got the insurance.”
OUR MISSION
To design an insurance portal that allows the policyholders to have a quick overview and understand their insurance coverage at a glance.
Everything at a glance
The main dashboard of the Unified Insurance Portal highlights to the users the areas they are being covered or not, providing convenience by giving them a single page where they can have an overview of all their policies and manage them.
Shortcuts were added to give the users an quick access to important pages, thus simplifying and speeding up the use of the portal.
Indicating claims status
For the process of submission of insurance claims, an overall status bar highlighting the statuses and details informs and updates the users on the claim process. The claims page provides a shortcut to submit a new claim. This allows for an easier and more transparent claims process.
Making information easy, simple and fast
The information on each screens are designed to contain only essential information such that the users need not sift through unwanted information. Also, by visualising the information, we are able to present the information to the users as clearly and straightforwardly as possible.
Integrating agent into UIP
Our findings have indicated that the main insurance policyholders trust and rely heavily on their agent. Hence we needed to bring the same service into the platform by integrating it into the Unified Insurance Portal. This is done by allowing the users to contact and communicate their insurance agents via the online platform.
To create the seamless experience between the Great Eastern web portals and websites, the Unified Insurance Portal followed the visual design language of the public website and loyalty programme portal, thus ensuring a single unifying experience across all three websites.