Harnessing a 'Datalake'
Aon, one of the world’s leading insurance service providers, came to us with a really interesting problem. They were in the process of developing a brand new consumer-facing product, as a service provider, they wanted to bring a partner into the project who were a specialists in consumer-centric thinking. Aon Sophi is a world first in Insurance broking allowing clients access to Aon's huge 'datalake' of information.
Some of the biggest companies in the world have dedicated risk mangers who inspect and analyse the suitability of insurance products and vendors for their unique corporate circumstances. Traditionally this is a role Aon carries out via a network of brokers and account executives who service their clients with information needs and support procurement decisions. Sophi gives Aon's clients access to their insurance analytics on demand. It takes away the need for the client to call the broker, request information and wait for a reply.
Without the input of users there can be no sure way of designing a solution. So we began what seemed like an impossible task, speak to Aon's insurance brokers all over the world to find out more about how they work. Interview Aon's clients who would use the system and uncover the hidden connections that would allow us to create a product that was both useful, and used. Through working with colleagues and clients from over 13 countries, we gained the insights we needed to design three key personas that focused on 'jobs to be done'.
We needed Aon in-house, so we regularly invited the team from the Innovation and Analytics centre here in Dublin into the office to run weekly sprint reviews and collaborate on creating user journeys based on user scenarios.
Launching in Q2 2017 to a Global audience the product will be used in-house in Microsoft, Google, Fedex, McDonalds, AT&T, and UPS among many others to augment insight into the suitability of insurers throughout the lifecycle of insurance products.
During the 8 month project, I led weekly design sprint reviews with the Global team across four countries. We solved one problem a week and moved on following an agile project framework. Every four weeks we ran user-testing to validate our designs.