The confidential information in this case study has been altered.
“ How to display the info right for the experts in a certain area in which I have no related experience?”
Background
Due to the compensation table was the ultimate records for channels to go over their earned profit with insurance companies, it was required to strictly document the most important information in distribution, such as Compensation, Budget, and Adjustment.
However, there were no finance module in this company’s insurance core platform since the mature solutions in the current market were plenty. Therefore, what users required for the management of finance records in distribution was an uncharted territory to them.
Research
“ Put design together piece by piece. “
During my survey of competitors, I noticed a generated invoice called Statement Summary, which listed out the breakdown of monthly payments and other details on a sheet. It provided insights into the structure of insurance agents’ compensation.
I looked up the term — Statement in insurance distribution, which referred to the Announcement for unpaid payments that were asked from channels to insurance companies, which suggested there may be a workflow to process all these payments in the operations.
Challenge
With the principle of delivering minimum viable solutions to unfamiliar areas, PM and I agreed to build a simple invoice sheet that listed payment breakdowns for channels and their agents in phase one. So that we may minimize the risk and developer’s resources.
I took the reference at a module called “Claim” on this company’s insurance core platform that provided basic functions for customers to file claims of insurance cover to insurance companies, since following the existing design pattern from similar actions might be a promising start.
However, the information structure for claims with a focus on the customers’ qualification check of certain coverages, payment record were only a small part of it while strict payment info were the main focus of finance operators, which meant the same pattern wouldn’t be applicable.
Consultation
“ Compensation table were more than a sheet of serial records. ”
In the presentation to all stakeholders, I mentioned that the statement table as a MVP may only list out channels’ financial serial records as the payment summary.
However, the consultants who specialized in insurance suggested we pick the brains of financial experts about the compensation in distribution.
Therefore, I reached out to a few experts, including a financial manager and a specialist in this company, and an experienced expert in the distribution, aiming to deliver a compensation table that presented the overall financial records of channels.
Interview
“ How exactly do financial experts VIEW these records? ”
To prepare well for the interviews and ensured that the information architecture we provided was helpful to the financial experts, I searched for accessible financial platforms and tended to dig out the insights into how records were presented.
During the interview, I showed them the wireframe of compensation table and only briefly mentioned that the “purpose” of this table, and then they started pointing out the parts they didn’t feel right about and the information that they didn’t find on the wireframe.
I summarized the pattern from their reactions and sorted the key information they focused on. For each record, they were almost intuitively looking for Date, Reason, and Amount in a sequential order, and silently aggregate the total amount when going through the records.
Surprisingly, the detailed information of why these records were generated wasn’t quite their concern since they mentioned that: “Numbers are primarily our focus. Going through a lot of records every day, we won’t really get into too much detail unless a certain record is wrong.”
Mockup
I reorganized the information structure of compensation, and prioritized them on the table. Therefore, users could mostly focus on the amount when going over the records and checking details by expanding the records when they needed.
Outcome
I altered the information structure of the compensation table and presented it to a finance expert who I haven’t interviewed with previously. During the user testing, with no further instruction. Surprisingly, this expert could easily understand all info and its meaning.
Reflection
Terminology was always a tricky part When designing products for experts in certain areas, users may overlook the info when they believed that a certain info didn’t concern them. Since I originally used items or reason to label the first column of records, interviewees couldn’t quite understand the meaning of it until I changed it into log name. Most ideal interviewee During the interview with 3 experts in finance, I realized that 2 of them were high-rank managers who were responsible for high-level financial planning, and only one of them who was end users with years of experience doing financial tracking and provided invaluable insights into how they view records as operators.
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