You don’t have to be a farmer to get Farm Bureau Insurance, but you do have to be a member of the Tennessee Farm Bureau. In fact, the Tennessee Farm Bureau is the nation’s largest state Farm Bureau organization, with more than 655,000 member families.
Each month, Farm Bureau provides thousands of visitors to its website with customized life insurance quotes. Seeing a sharp increase in mobile visitors, the online quote system was in need of an overhaul.
I worked with the talented team at Tombras to research, design, prototype and test the deliverables in this project for Farm Bureau Insurance.
Project Goals:
Our initial concept was to create a card based interface that allowed mobile users to swipe forward and backward through screens. User testing revealed that most users hold their mobile device in one hand and are familiar with using their thumb to swipe and interact with content.
After building a prototype and conducting additional user testing we realized that the ability to swipe forward and backward, in conjunction with the traditional “continue” button confused users and increased friction.
Learning from our first design concept, we shifted gears to create a hybrid concept balancing a friendly chat session with the feel of a clean and simple form. To streamline the process, we only ask the customer for the information we absolutely need to capture at this stage in the quote process.
After mapping out the user flow, I designed a series of mid-fidelity screens and a quick Invision prototype which enabled us to conduct user testing and gather feedback from testers about the experience.
To help personalize the quote experience, we created a friendly character named ‘Thomas’ who would walk users through the quote request process in a familiar chat interface. We also provided the contextual help on the screens where user testing indicated customers were asking the most questions.
We researched the landscape of insurance quote experiences and took inspiration from several sources including…
After making great progress on the mobile application, I turned out attention to updating the desktop experience on the Farm Bureau website. To maintain consistency across devices, I combined the chat style interface with the familiarity of an online form. Below are a few of the low-fidelity mockups I created in Sketch.
Through user testing and interviews, I learned that users quickly grasped the chat-style interface and were able to easily move through the quote screens to obtain a final quote.
I then used Sketch and Invision to create high-fidelity mockups and a prototype to present to the key stakeholders at Farm Bureau.
Based on additional user testing we learned some key insights:
Interactive Prototype – Click Around!
Using a design process that included sketching, wire-framing, design mockups and prototyping we produced a vastly improved version of the Farm Bureau Insurance Quote Request process.
Based on user testing and feedback we improved the usability and reduced the steps and overall time required to obtain a life insurance quote.
Under the old quote request process, users had to navigate a minimum of 6 screens before they were presented with a price quote. With the new quick quote process, users are presented with their price after only 3 Screens, a reduction of 50%.
Visit the final live version at the Farm Bureau website.