American Home Shield
Revamping the user experience and interface design for a large-scale website like American Home Shield isn't always a walk in the park. As a home insurance company with a diverse user base, from policyholders and professionals to potential customers, how do you create a streamlined platform that ensures ease of use and intuitive navigation? Amidst the complexity, how does the organization prioritize user-friendly design while transforming the old site into something modern and accessible?
Client
Frontdoor
Duration
January - August 2022
Role
UI/UX Designer, UX Researcher
Industry
Insurance
Kicking It Off
American Home Shield has always been dedicated to enhancing customer satisfaction, but they aimed even higher than simply managing policies. They approached my team with a bold vision: to completely transform their website into a user-friendly platform that guarantees a seamless experience.
With a project expected to span several months, it was important to approach it systematically to get the most out of our work. American Home Shield entrusted us to engage stakeholders to define processes and identify areas for UX enhancement in order to assess the project's scope. The resulting project requirements provided a detailed roadmap for the development team. Additionally, our creation of high-fidelity UI elements, including essential screens, components, and prototypes, streamlined the development process and made it easier to present proposed updates to American Home Shield stakeholders and executives.
Thinking It Through
We started by conducting initial interviews with key stakeholders across all different levels of the organization in order to figure out what was working and what wasn’t from the people who know the brand intimately. Since this project had touch-points across various departments within the organization, it meant circling back with one key team on a weekly basis, where we demoed the work that we had accomplished from the previous week and received targeted feedback to iterate on.
To give ourselves a solid foundation for the visual design phase, this initial phase of work included a comprehensive UX audit to assess the current state of the site. We developed detailed user personas and journeys to better understand the diverse needs and behaviors of American Home Shield’s customers. This helped us create a completely revamped sitemap that made navigation intuitive and user-friendly. Additionally, we put together content maps and outlines for each page, which we handed off to their content team to start writing for the site. These content maps were complemented with low-fidelity wireframes, allowing stakeholders to get a feel for how the content should be organized.
This foundational work guided our decisions and kept us focused throughout the entire project. This thorough documentation ensured that we had a solid blueprint to follow, keeping everyone aligned and informed throughout the entire process.
Crafting An Experience That Delights
As we shifted gears into the design phase, our first move was transforming our low-fidelity wireframes into high-fidelity prototypes. We continued our regular meetings with the stakeholders – seeking their feedback to refine and enhance our work. These sessions were invaluable, providing insights and perspectives that we used to fine-tune every aspect of the design. With such a large site, it was important to us to keep the design process as organized as possible, given the amount of iterations we went through for each piece. A bulk of the work in this phase of the project was to simply work with my team to create a flawless working process in Figma.
Once we began making iterative changes to key pieces of the site, like the main navigation and presentation of pricing details, we prioritized conducting user research and testing to validate that our changes were for the best. This feedback loop became our sanity check throughout the entire design journey, which lasted for several weeks. Once we were confident that everyone was thrilled with the designs, we moved on to receiving final approvals from the folks we didn’t see that much – like lawyers and executives – to hammer down the finer details.
As our talented team of developers took the reins from us to turn this new site into a reality, my work didn’t stop there. I switched into assisting mode, ensuring that the developers had the design support they needed from us to make the site perfect. This included providing detailed documentation, answering queries, and making quick design adjustments based on development constraints. As they finished pages, I meticulously QA’d them against our designs, making sure that every last detail was perfect. From color consistency to functionality, nothing was left to chance. It was a thorough process, but one that ensured the final product was of the highest quality.
As we wrapped up the project, we did it with complete confidence that the new site would be an awesome experience for their customers for years to come. The collaboration and hard work paid off, resulting in a modern, user-friendly website that not only met but exceeded expectations. We knew we had created something special – a site that was not only visually appealing but also intuitive and efficient. It was a project that highlighted the power of teamwork and attention to detail, leaving us proud of the impact we had made and excited for future collaborations.