Ride-alongs with claims operations
Watched agents rebuild the same claim three times over email. Most rework came from two fields and one document type.
03Insurtech · Claims· 2021 — 2022
Claims that stay understandable on the worst day
A claims experience designed for stress: fewer decisions, visible status, no dead ends.
- Role
- Product Designer — claims service design, forms, status experience
- Team
- 2 designers, 1 PM, claims operations team
- Platforms
- Responsive web, ops console
- Timeline
- 2021 — 2022
Outcomes
What changed
−35%
support tickets
2×
faster first submit
100%
claims with live status
Context
The situation
People file an insurance claim on one of the worst days of their year. Guardian One's claim form assumed the opposite: policy numbers at hand, patient attention, and correct document names.
Claimants submitted partial information, then went silent. Operations chased documents by phone and the support queue absorbed the confusion.
The problem
People filed claims in a hurry and then went quiet — unsure what documents counted, whether anything had been received, or who to ask when a claim sat idle.
Research
What I learned first
Interviews with recent claimants
Nobody could recall their policy number. Everyone could describe what happened. The form asked for the former first.
Silence audit
Claims with no status update for 72 hours generated the majority of support contacts, regardless of whether anything was wrong.
Process
How it came together
Split the form by what a person knows from memory
Answerable-now fields moved to the front; lookup-required fields moved after submission, where ops could assist.
Made documents concrete
Each upload shows an example image, an accepted-formats line and what the document is used for, so guessing stopped.
Gave every claim a live timeline
Received, under review, action needed, settled — each with a date and a named next step, visible without logging a ticket.
Stress-tested for accessibility
Keyboard-only and screen-reader passes on the whole flow, with error messaging that names the field and the fix rather than 'invalid input'.
Key decisions
Calls worth defending
Submit early, complete later
A claim can be opened with partial information. Getting into the system beats getting it perfect, and it stops the anxious re-filing loop.
No dead ends
Every state — including rejection — ends with an action, a contact, or a timeframe.
One vocabulary across claimant and ops
Status names in the claimant view match the ops console exactly, so phone conversations stopped needing translation.
Reflection
What I’d carry forward
Reducing anxiety is a measurable design outcome: fewer tickets, faster submissions.
Silence is a design failure, not an operational one.
Forms improve most when you ask what the person can answer without leaving the room.
- Service design
- Forms & validation
- Trust & clarity
- Accessibility
Keep reading
