About the project
Direct Line were having problems with home insurance.
Sales were slowing and customer feedback scores were on the decline.
The online experience had become complex and time consuming.
I worked with the home insurance team to identify three areas for improvement. We then went about creating a prototype and testing our thinking with customers.
The set up
We created four insurance personas to recruit participants.
Testing took place over two days at our in house UX labs with twelve users taking part. I facilitated the sessions whilst the project team could see and hear everything in a separate viewing room.
Insurance personas were based on demographics, socio economics, family dynamics and attitudes.
User testing approach
The environment
It’s impossible to recreate a real life environment in test conditions. But you can manage the environment to make users feel relaxed and comfortable. Forcing participants to use unfamiliar technology skews results. So we provide a range of devices and let users choose the one they are most comfortable with. And an environment free of cables, stands and cameras encourages natural interactions.
The task
It’s easy to get the results you want using prescribed tasks and restrictive prototypes. Instead we describe a scenario and let users run with it, using whatever they have to hand. Users are given free reign – they have unrestricted access to the internet, can make phone calls and take notes. No forced journeys or leading prompts.
Focus on what people do not what they say
It’s tempting to latch on to comments that confirm what you want to hear. But I prefer to focus on what users do rather than what they say. We are interested in behaviour after all – did users ‘get’ the website or app they were looking at? As a facilitator paying too much attention to what users say can distort your ability to observe what they are doing. And someone’s explanation of what they did doesn’t always reflect what actually happened.
Changes & findings
Here’s what we changed, the thinking behind it, and how it played out in testing.
Reordering the question sequence
Replacing drop downs with buttons.
Making the product choices clear.
Outcomes
Most of the recommended changes were implemented on the live site.
This led to fewer customer abandonments and increased sales of the enhanced product. The approach has since been adopted across other insurance products.