Background
Personal insurance customers with life, disability, and critical illness policies had long expressed frustration with limited digital access. Self-service options were virtually non-existent, forcing customers to rely on call centres for even basic tasks. This created dissatisfaction, high operational costs, and an NPS gap compared to competitors.
The secure site initiative was part of the company’s broader digital transformation strategy. My role was to ensure that customer priorities shaped the roadmap—transforming the site from a transactional tool into a foundation for long-term digital engagement.
My Role
I assumed leadership of the research program midstream, reframing early, fragmented activities into a coherent multi-phase strategy. I aligned design, product, and engineering leaders around prioritized learning goals, orchestrated a rapid insight pipeline under tight constraints, and introduced scalable methods for accessing customers.
By embedding closely with design and development teams, I ensured that ongoing design decisions and future roadmap planning were anchored in validated customer needs.
Challenges
The organization lacked an internal customer research panel, with standard recruitment lead times estimated at three months—too long for project needs. I designed a hybrid method that combined structured surveys with think-aloud protocols, deployed via UserTesting. This unlocked immediate access to policyholder proxies, producing both quantitative behavioural patterns and qualitative attitudinal insights.
The approach not only accelerated delivery but was later adopted across the design organization as a best practice for time-sensitive research.
Methods
I orchestrated a staged program that triangulated across:
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Internal SME interviews – surfaced call-driver pain points from customer service reps.
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Rapid surveys + think-alouds – captured behavioural patterns, motivations, and goals from 30+ policyholders.
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In-depth interviews – developed rich contextual understanding and empathy.
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Usability tests – evaluated ad placement, messaging clarity, and login flow comprehension.
Data was synthesized into archetypes, then evolved into personas and current-state journey maps. These artefacts provided a strategic framework for capability prioritization.
Internal SME Interviews
Four 1-hour interviews were conducted with customer service representatives to learn about common customer pain points
Surveys
30 surveys were launched through UserTesting.com, participants' spoke thoughts aloud to expand on survey responses
User Archetypes
Survey data was synthesized into key behavioural themes and two user archetypes were identified
In-Depth Customer Interviews
3 participants from each archetype were selected for in-depth interviews to gain deeper contextual user knowledge
User Personas
Interview and survey data were synthesized into detailed user personas to guide the design team in their ongoing work
Unmoderated Usability Tests
Conducted to evaluate placement and user comprehension of announcements for the new secure site
Qualitative data synthesis: Mapping themes and behaviours.
Copyright 2023. Not to be used without permission.
Results
Three key personas were surfaced through the data synthesis. These were visualized in partnership with a UX Designer (persona illustration) to help reduce gender and age bias compared to stock photo imagery. Full insights, including the personas and current-state journeys were circulated among the Design team and stakeholders.
Data-driven personas and current-state journey maps
Copyright 2023. Not to be used without permission.
Impact
Product strategy: Insights directly influenced rollout sequencing—address and billing changes launched first to reduce call-centre load and address top customer pain points.
Organizational adoption: Personas and current-state journeys became reference points across multiple initiatives beyond this project.
Practice growth: My rapid-access research model was institutionalized into the design team’s playbook, reducing reliance on long recruitment cycles.
Stakeholder alignment: Research reframed the secure site as a customer experience transformation, not just a technical release—strengthening cross-functional commitment to long-term investment.
Reflection
Joining this project late in the design stage and taking over research initiated by others was a challenge. Design was already underway and research needed to be conducted rapidly so that ongoing design decisions were informed by actual user needs. As someone new to the team, this required me to rapidly immerse myself in the project, understand the team structure, clarify the stakeholder needs, select appropriate methods, conduct the research itself, and deliver my findings in a way that would provide clear design directives that were mindful of the existing time constraints. Regular check-ins with the team enhanced our communication and ensured the successful development of the multi-phase research plan. In the end, I am happy that I not only delivered actionable insights under intense constraints but also expanded the organization’s research capabilities, leaving behind a replicable model for future digital transformation programs.