Company
Joyn Insurance
Year
2023
Type of Work
Product Ideation, User research, Product Management
At Joyn Insurance, underwriters rely on a wide range of data to assess whether or not they want to insure a client. This data (construction details, location, occupancy, environmental and crime factors) is sourced from third-party vendors. Instead of manually visiting each vendor’s site for data, Spark (Joyn's internal application) integrated with the vendors' APIs.
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I was tasked with overhauling the 3rd Party Data (3PD) feature because the existing feature was not intuitive and had poor tracking capabilities. My goal was to create a more user-friendly, informative, and efficient system that would allow underwriters to manage API calls from third-party data sources with ease and precision.
01
Current Process
Below is a User Journey Map and annotated screenshots of the 3PD feature, highlighting the key issues. The design lacks intuitive navigation, provides minimal context, and fails to deliver the necessary information to understand what’s happening.
02
Goals
After conducting a series of weekly interviews, I uncovered specific pain points and desires:
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Visibility and Control: Users needed to see the status of every individual API call and be able to cancel or re-run them at will, instead of blinding waiting for all calls to be completed.
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Timing Information: Users needed to know how long a call had been running for in case they needed to restart the process or report potential bugs.
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Grouping of Calls: Users wanted to group related calls and execute them simultaneously. They wanted the ability to halt the process in case the submission fell out of appetite early on.
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Cost Efficiency: Users demanded that the system automatically stopped subsequent calls when an undesired output was detected, reducing the cost of unnecessary API calls down the line.
03
Challenges
After brainstorming, my initial concept involved moving the action button ('Get External Data') into a dedicated drawer for a cleaner interface and more real estate.
​​However, when I presented this idea, it was firmly opposed. Users were concerned that relocating the functionality would make it less visible. They worried that such a critical functionality could be overlooked if it was not marked as a primary action on the footer.
04
Design Solution
To directly address these concerns, I introduced 2 key enhancements:
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Education: I added modals that provide contextual information about each API call, including what data outputs will be returned and where they will be populated. This way, even without the functionality being in the footer, users would have clear guidance.
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Visibility: To maintain visibility, I designed the drawer with attention grabbing indicators representing calls in progress, completed, or errored. These visual cues ensured the feature could not be overlooked.
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I created prototypes and conducted usability testing with the same group of users, who responded positively to the changes. They agreed to move forward and integrate the new design into their workflow for a one-month trial.
05
Final Designs
Designs were finalized in collaboration with the users, then presented to the engineering team. I created tickets for the front-end team and tested the PRs in partnership with the QA team before the feature was deployed.
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06
Impact
Although I left the company before final metrics were captured, the redesigned 3PD feature was structured with clear impact goals and measurement plans in place. The core areas of focus included:
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Cost Efficiency: The system dynamically triggers and pays for 3PD API call costs only when the specific product gets rated. By leveraging overlapping data across Lines of Business (LOBs), we avoid making redundant calls, further reducing costs.
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Guided Process: The sequencing and grouping of API calls have been structured to guide users, ensuring they only make the necessary calls based on their current stage in the process. This design reduces the likelihood of unnecessary costs by pausing the process when alerts are triggered.
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Troubleshooting and Transparency: The enhanced interface makes it easy to identify and troubleshoot issues, providing clear timestamps for when calls were made. This transparency allows users to pinpoint where something went wrong, enabling quick and efficient problem resolution.