Work
Design research to define the future of travel insurance
Insurance Australia Group
In Brief
In Detail
Challenge
IAG needed to invigorate and evolve their travel insurance product which was faltering against newer, more progressive product offerings from several niche market players who were gradually becoming more assertive and competitive.
A lack of product innovation had led to dwindling customer engagement and became the only underperforming product across IAG’s personal insurance line.
Outcomes
IAG’s new direct-to-consumer travel insurance product has resonated with consumers and provided a 36% uplift in revenue and higher customer satisfaction
A project website and published book charting the project’s process and results have been referenced by other product owners and teams, providing longer-term benefits to IAG beyond this project
Human-centred design and depth discovery principles embedded into IAG product teams
How it was done
A mixed method research approach saw us interview 22 recent travellers in their homes or workplaces, engage 1,148 respondents via survey, and conduct an extensive competitor/peer review
Co-design sessions generated 140 ideas across six design challenges which helped challenge assumptions, ideate and innovate
Established a multidisciplinary team of 15, working embedded and collaboratively
Insurance Australia Group (IAG) is Australia and New Zealand’s largest general insurer. Through its many brands, it underwrites almost $12 billion of premium per annum.
Prime Motive immersed the IAG product team in discovery, design research and innovation sprints and armed them with the vision, insights, tools and confidence to create a direct-to-consumer travel insurance experience that would delight service users and eclipse competitor offerings.
Problem framing and insight gathering. A mixed-method research approach
Our strategic design team created and distributed an internal survey via IAGs intranet as a tactical and cost-effective way to engage a large number of participants. The 1,000+ responses provided insights into traveller behaviours and patterns, challenges and needs, and stress points across their pre and post-holiday time.
Ethnographic research saw us speak to 22 people aged 25-69 who travelled internationally within the past 12 months. Extended interviews at participants' homes and workplaces prompted recollection of their complete experience—from the initial idea of taking a trip to researching the destination, purchasing flights, accommodation, insurance, and returning home safely. We later mapped 2,000 data points from the interviews and unearthed multiple patterns linking customer behaviour.
Competitor and peer review helped us uncover how other general insurers, single product players and new market disruptors were framing travel insurance engagement and supporting customers. We analysed reach strategies, product offering, overall service experience and one-to-one communications strategies.
Persona and journey mapping. A visual design toolkit, for now and the future
A number of artefacts helped synthesise our research and inform the new direct-to-consumer travel insurance experience vision.
Journey maps and personas were developed to visualise each persona’s current travel insurance engagement journey; highlighting challenges, obstacles and various levels of emotional engagement. ‘Moments that matter’—touch points prevalent in all customer persona travel journeys were identified also.
Artefacts developed in a project of this size and scale can become indispensable tools beyond their initial use—and in this project we designed artefacts as indispensable tools that would project on to future product and service enhancements. A project website was created to serve as a digital archive for the project findings and artefacts that were made accessible to the wider team.
Co-designing workshops to ideate and innovate
The insight documentation and visuals were shared with users to validate, prioritise, and further detail their requirements. These visuals worked well to encourage more nuanced responses from users who were able to elaborate and, in some cases, retract their previous statements.
Prototyping and user testing to validate concepts and hypothesis.
20 customers provided feedback and commentary as they explored each area of the concepts and features during user testing sessions and described their expectations and desires at each step. User testing validated areas for service improvement over both the short and long term.
The concepts created through this process were received with overwhelming positivity by users and IAG stakeholders and provided the great confidence needed to move forward.
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