A service oriented and dialogue driven website for insurance company a.s.r.

Website, Concept, UX and Visual Design, Art Direction — Project at Studio Dumbar, December 2015 – September 2016

Goal

a.s.r. is one of the biggest and oldest Dutch insurance companies and works closely with a network of independent financial advisors. We were asked to develop distinctive concepts for their website that would reflect its motto: ‘helping by doing’.

Result

We developed a clean — almost minimalistic — website, which was striped of all surplus- and inside-out-information, while introducing a navigation revolving around a dialogue driven (or chat-based) interface. Instead of navigating a hierarchical or thematic structure, the user is presented with just one simple question from: ‘How may I help you?’. Not only are users already used to chat-based interfaces, it also makes it possible to focus completely on the specific need of an individual user.

After a soft launch and a period of continuous dialogue improvements (based on real questions), the first time fix was drastically improved (compared to the old website). There was a decrease in waste in calls, and the NPS score (customer satisfaction score) went up considerably.

Role

As part of small the team at Studio Dumbar, I was responsible for concepting, interaction and visual design. When implementation of the website started, I worked at a.s.r. for a 6-months period as the UX‘er in the scrum team. This meant a close collaboration with the different disciplines and trying out possible solutions directly in code together with the front-end developer. The UI-designs of the more content heavy pages (e.g. product information pages) were co-designed with the copy writers on the team. This made it possible to quickly go back and forth — the content was the basis for my design decisions, while I was able to shape and inform the content creation.

Awards

Research and debrief
4 distinctive concepts
Work-out flows that cause most of the waste in the organisation, validate a chat-based interface, and see what interactions are necessary in a dialogue-driven interface
User testing with an interactive, HTML prototype
User interface and visual design of all templates during scrum project at a.s.r.
Result: first chat-based website in The Netherlands
And completely responsive

Try a.s.r.’s dialogue-driven website (in Dutch!)