Underwriter UX
Re-Architecture
(Case Study)

Project Overview

• Context: Redesign of our entire internal tool used for underwriting. The project focused on improving the Underwriter (UW) experience by addressing inefficiencies in the current workflow.

• Role: Lead Product Designer (Project Lead), working with two other designers and collaborating closely with engineering, product, and underwriting leadership.

• Timeline: One year.

• Tools: Figma for prototyping and various research methods.

Problem Statement

The existing system didn't align with the underwriters' workflow, leading to inefficiencies and frustration. Key challenges included an unstructured submission flow and poor task management.

Research

Research was conducted across various user groups. We had an existing bank of research from Underwriters to serve as a base for what change we knew we needed to make, this allowed us to dig deeper into the topics with our user groups. In speaking to underwriting, both boots on the ground and leadership, and product & engineering leadership, we identified pain points we wanted to address with this initiative while also building a bank of feature requests to be tackled by sprint teams in tandem with this project. These feature requests were aptly sized to be rolled into the current product roadmap and helped ease the quality of life for the underwriting team. 

• The pain points we thought were the most vital to address were:

• Disorganized submission flows led to inefficiencies.

• Underwriters had to use external tools, making workflows fragmented.

• Reworked information architecture and feature enhancements were needed.

Ideation & Conceptualization

Key focus areas were submission flow and task management. Early sketches addressed navigation improvements, task management enhancements, and submission prioritization.

Early Iterations

Design Process

• Low-Fidelity Designs: Early wireframes focused on reorganizing submission flows and adding quick navigation options.

• Usability Testing: Tested new navigation patterns and task management solutions with underwriters, leading to further refinements.

• Iterations: Iterative design based on usability testing, focused on addressing pain points like scrolling inefficiencies and unclear submission statuses.

• High-Fidelity Designs: Final designs introduced organized navigation, enhanced document centers, and integrated task management.

Prototyping

• Prototypes: Created interactive prototypes for submission and workflow management, task reminders, and document handling in Figma.

Challenges & Constraints

• Fragmented tools used by underwriters led to difficulties in centralizing workflows.

• Limited development resources meant some features were scoped down or delayed.

Final Solution

• Submission Flow: 

• Introduced a structured, logical navigation aligned with underwriters' needs.

• Introduced an account overview for persistent information and quick actions.

• Overhauled the document center with version history and improved management features.

• Made page optimizations to address the current fragmented workflow.

• Task Management: 

• Introduced in-app reminders and dashboard enhancements to centralize task handling.

• Introduced tabbed navigation to submission management for streamlining workflow.

• Added new columns to the queue where submissions are managed to reflect information that's important to underwriting.

Impact & Results

• The redesigned submission flow reduced inefficiencies and streamlined decision-making processes.

• Document handling became more intuitive, leading to faster processing times.

• The addition of in-app task management improved overall workflow efficiency.

Takeaways

This project successfully addressed core inefficiencies in the underwriter workflow, making tasks more manageable and processes streamlined. Future iterations could focus on automating more manual processes.