Digital Dynamic Application:

An Advisor Tool for Creating & Submitting Insurance Applications

2023

Background

The digital application platform used by insurance advisors to submit client applications was being retired and replaced with a new system. This transition was strategically critical: advisor adoption and trust directly impacted sales volume, operational efficiency, and client satisfaction.

The challenge was not simply to test usability—it was to ensure continuity of valued features, eliminate pain points, and establish a stronger foundation for advisor-facing digital experiences. My role was to lead a research program that gave advisors and their marketing assistants—an audience historically inaccessible to design teams—a direct voice in shaping the product.

My Role

I orchestrated the research strategy end-to-end, from gaining executive buy-in for advisor access, to designing a multi-phase research plan, to ensuring insights translated into actionable design priorities. I partnered with the Project Owner, UX leadership, and Sales leadership to align objectives, mitigate risks, and build the first sustainable channel for engaging advisors in research.

Beyond execution, I led stakeholder negotiations to overturn prior restrictions on advisor contact, personally managed a research panel of 40 advisors, and established processes to balance engagement frequency with business sensitivities. These efforts permanently expanded the team’s access to this critical audience.

Challenges

Advisor access: The business had long denied direct contact with advisors, citing workload concerns and reputational risk. By building trust with Sales leadership and proposing a controlled outreach model, I secured approval for limited but ongoing access.
Assistant engagement: Marketing assistants—key to digital workflows but historically overlooked—were recruited into research for the first time, ensuring a more complete perspective on application use.
No incentives: With no budget for participant honoraria, I designed recruitment messaging that emphasized professional value and influence. Engagement exceeded expectations, with >40 advisors opting in.
Seasonal delays: Summer scheduling risks were mitigated through proactive timeline adjustments and transparent stakeholder updates.

These adaptations turned systemic blockers into precedent-setting wins for the research practice.

Methods

I structured a staged program:

Survey recruitment & scoping – short diagnostic survey via wholesalers identified advisor roles, satisfaction drivers, and willingness to participate further.
In-depth interviews with digital probes – 9 advisors and 2 marketing assistants participated in 45-minute contextual interviews.
Data synthesis – insights mapped across four categories (Business, Development, Content, UX) and translated into a prioritized design task list.

This framework not only uncovered pain points but also directly connected findings to roadmap and backlog priorities.

Surveys

42 surveys provided basic details about application experiences and enabled participants to opt-in for an interview

In-Depth Advisor Interviews

11 participants in total (9x advisors, 2x marketing assistants) were interviewed about their experiences with the digital applications

Digital Probes

During the interview, participants shared screen and walked through the application process, live, to demonstrate pros and cons

Results & Impact

Design impact: Findings informed the refinement of the new digital application, simplifying workflows and eliminating friction points surfaced in interviews.
Organizational mindset shift: Advisor research, once considered off-limits, is now actively requested by business partners. Stakeholders saw firsthand the value of advisor perspectives and began advocating for their inclusion.
Practice expansion: The advisor panel I established became an enduring asset, enabling ongoing research with a hard-to-reach segment.
Trust and adoption: Advisors expressed appreciation for being included. One participant later re-engaged in a separate study, citing visible improvements made based on his earlier feedback as proof that the company valued his input.

Reflection

Since joining the team, there were many barriers to accessing advisors for generative research and design validation tests. Once I had better knowledge of the risks involved in working directly with advisors - fear of them being contacted too frequently and getting upset at the company, and fear that we would be setting an expectation that all their feedback would be immediately incorporated into the designs, - I was able to provide greater transparency into our process and establish an approach that would mitigate those risks.

By securing advisor access where others had failed, I reframed research from a perceived risk into a trusted business asset. The insights directly improved a mission-critical tool, while the relationships and processes established expanded the company’s research capability for the long term.

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