Insurance Website Redesign
Web
Design Director
Benny Hung
UX Designers
Yang Cong
Gino Morrow
Program Director
David Meehan
Project Overview
The AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) Insurance Program offers a range of insurance plans exclusively to over 400,000 AICPA members. Provided by Aon — a leading global insurance firm — the program includes personal products like life insurance, auto and home insurance, and long-term disability insurance, as well as business products such as professional liability and cyber coverage. Aon partners with top insurers, including Prudential, CNA, and Liberty Mutual, to secure valuable plans for AICPA members.
The existing site was built a decade ago and suffers from outdated design and insufficient maintenance. The goal of this project was to redesign the site to deliver a significantly improved user experience for AICPA Insurance Program customers.
We completed a Sprint Zero, which included a series of stakeholder workshops, user research (competitive analysis, user interviews, data analytics, and journey mapping), and early design work (wireframing, prototyping, and user testing). Our focus during this phase was to identify key issues and present an initial proposal.
I worked on this project as a UX designer and illustrator, creating wireframes and illustrations for visual design direction.
Workshop
Stakeholders’ Concerns & Critiques on Website
To identify the key issues with the current AICPA Insurance Program site, we conducted a series of workshops with stakeholders, including clients from Aon’s marketing and product teams. Between sessions, we summarized client feedback and carried out additional research as needed. Given the volume of affinity maps generated during the workshops, we used Miro to seamlessly work with both on-site and remote clients.
Website Goals
Website Critiques
As we received too many negative comments on the current website, they can be summarized as below:
Lack of intuitive visual cue that can guide first-time users.
Some language is confusing even for existing users. The search bar has been used a lot for a simple login feature.
Product pages have too much copy and no clear information hierarchy.
Users need to click too many times to finish one task (e.g. get an insurance quote).
Page layouts are inconsistent throughout the site.
Slow loading times
Workshop
Competitor Analysis
Through the workshop sessions, we identified key competitors of the AICPA Insurance Program and gathered stakeholder input on which aspects we should reference. We then synthesized the physical Post-its from the workshops with the digital notes created in Miro. The result was a comprehensive competitor information board that served as a foundation for our analysis.
Competitor Analysis
Workshop
Who Users Are & What They Need
To better understand user behavior and design a user-centered experience, we aimed to translate our research findings into personas and journey maps. Fortunately, with access to Salesforce data from over 200,000 users and support from a strong marketing team providing accurate user demographics, we were able to identify key user groups, purchasing triggers, and critical touchpoints.
Business Insurance Visitors (Users)
Purchasing Triggers
Touchpoints
During the workshop sessions, we generated over 20 user stories using a template and had stakeholders vote on the most important ones. These prioritized stories were then used to define the MVP user flows.
User Stories
Workshop
Prioritize User Groups
By analyzing the data, we were able to identify not only the primary user group and how they arrive at the site, but also the devices they use. With over 90% of traffic coming from desktop users, we decided to prioritize the desktop experience while still keeping mobile responsiveness in mind during the wireframing process.
Personas
Identify Target Users
We grouped the user stories into five major categories and created a persona for each. Typically, a persona includes personal details to make it feel like a real individual. However, for this project — since we were addressing both life and business insurance products — we had to be especially thorough when defining personal attributes. For instance, someone purchasing a professional liability policy might also be interested in a personal life insurance product.
As a result, beyond highlighting each persona’s primary insurance needs, we also carefully considered potential cross-sell opportunities.
Journey Maps
Identify Opportunities
Using the personas, we simulated user behaviors and created journey maps to represent their experiences. Each journey map included five key dimensions — Do, Think, Feel, Pain, and Opportunity — which helped us accurately capture user needs in the current state and identify opportunities for improvement in the future state.
In each journey, the user was portrayed as a CPA researching or purchasing a product. We mapped various touchpoints such as newsletters, Google searches, and direct URLs to reflect real research insights and ensure we addressed the user experience from multiple perspectives.
Workshop
Construct Personalization Strategy Workflow
One of the major challenges we faced was helping CPAs quickly find the insurance products they needed. Due to the website’s complex information architecture — offering over 30 different products — new users often had to navigate through multiple pages just to understand which product was right for them. Even users who already knew what they were looking for still had to sift through poorly organized content on product landing pages before making a decision.
Given the need to promote both business and personal insurance products, each with distinct features, we began exploring a content personalization strategy through a series of follow-up workshops.
Onboarding Question Ideation
Matching Up User Needs with Features
Redesign
Future State Journey Maps
Redesign
Sketches
Throughout the final workshops, we focused on ideating website layouts using paper sketches based on the required content. From these sessions, we selected the most valuable elements to incorporate into the initial set of wireframes.
Page Layout Ideation
Page Layout Ideation
Redesign
Lo-fi Wireframes
Building on the ideated layouts, personalization strategies, and future state journey maps, we began creating wireframes. We used Sketch for the wireframing process and InVision to conduct user testing.
Wireframes
Redesign
User Testing Feedback
We posted a user testing recruitment questionnaire on Craigslist and received over 100 responses. After carefully reviewing the submissions, we selected 14 participants who closely matched our personas for the testing sessions. We then conducted the user testing and meticulously documented the findings.
User Testing Participants
User Testing Analysis
Redesign
Iterate & Finalize Wireframes
We continuously iterated on the wireframes throughout the user testing process. By the final testing session, users expressed high satisfaction with the prototype.
Redesign
Visual Design & Illustration Styles
As the visual designer and illustrator on the team, I dedicated significant time to creating a visual design mood board and invited stakeholders to share their preferences. I also developed original illustrations and icons to support the design. However, given the subjective nature of visual design, we were not able to finalize a specific direction at this stage. That said, we plan to continue exploring visual styles in the future phases of the project.
Stakeholder Preference
AICPA Brand Guidelines
Font Treatments & Color Palettes
Illustration Exploration
UI Exploration
Design Implementation & Next Steps
After further stakeholder review, it was confirmed that the proposed information architecture, wireframes, and visual design direction met the project requirements effectively. We then collaborated with Aon's internal design and development teams to expand on the initial designs. The updated site successfully launched in 2020.
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