Overview
Bonzah came to us with a request to create a native app that complements their fully functional website. We saw a unique opportunity to streamline the insurance purchasing process while providing simplified explanation of coverage terms, something the average car renter struggles to understand.
Keep reading for more in-depth dive into the case study, or skip to the prototype.
Roles
Tools
Accomplishments
Few people know the terms of their car insurance, and even fewer know how rental car insurance works. It's not without reason; rental car companies often make their policies difficult to understand in order to get more customers to buy their insurance. However, most car renters aren't aware that there are cheaper, third-party alternatives. Enter Bonzah, a rental car insurance company that offers an affordable, alternative solution to car rental insurance sold at counters. Steve, the founder and our client, wanted his customers to drive confidently, knowing that the insurance that they purchased would be a fraction of the cost.
Steve wanted to create a mobile app that could accomplish three things:
From our initial kick-off meeting with Steve, we found that 65% of Bonzah’s sales are driven by 15% of their repeat customers.
With this knowledge, we set out to create a native mobile app that explains coverage terms simply to new customers and fulfills the needs of returning customers.
In order to navigate the complex world of rental car insurance for ourselves, we started with research. In our domain research, we found a wide spectrum of various companies offering rental car insurance. First, we discovered that while most rental car insurance companies offer collision insurance, they don’t offer liability insurance. Secondly, we found that the top auto insurance claim filed was fender benders, which falls under both collision and liability. However, if the insurance doesn’t offer liability insurance, then that could make it costly for the renter. Once Bonzah does offer liability insurance, it would make them an attractive option for customers in terms of coverage and affordability. However, there isn’t one standard insurance for renters across the board.
The competitors we looked at ranged from direct competitors (on the left) to indirect competitors (to the right).
We conducted interviews with users and SME’s to get information on consumer behavior, market segments, and attitude towards insurance. After mapping our data onto an affinity map, we found reoccuring trends.
Users valued the flexibility of booking last minute and will go with whatever is cheapest in their research.
We collaborated with our client to get a sense of what he thought the fundamental problem was. We also did the same exercise amongst the team. We saw some overlap between the two, specifically the problem of risk of exposure for users, the fact that users struggle with a way to easily evaluate and buy insurance policies, and the fact that insurance is complex to navigate, especially when it comes to understanding and purchasing relevant insurance.
This led us to our problem statement:
Insurance offered at the car rental counter is confusing and overpriced. Renters who decline coverage risk the chance of a costly accident that can negatively impact their primary insurance.
After several rounds of revision, we created design principles to guide the rest of our design process:
With our problem defined, we set out to brainstorm ideas that could solve for it. We first came up with 16 use cases that multiplied into 41 concept statements, which were eventually narrowed down to four concepts. We then proceeded to several rounds of quick sketching around four concept statements to generate divergence in our ideas and get multiple lenses in.
Once we had gathered insights from concept testing, we overhauled some of the design and rapidly prototyped around some key tasks to present to users for usability testing.
We parcelled out future recommendations into two segments. Our recommendations were based on our own research in conjunction with Steve’s business plans. The first are short-term recommendations:
Though our initial goal was to build an app that centered around Bonzah's return users, we ended up creating one that worked for both the inital demographic and new users. By designing for edge cases, our prototype will be a better experience for the average user as well. Our major "a-ha" moment came after concept testing, when we had explored different venues of bringing rental car insurance to consumers. While our team had introduced some novel ideas to our users, I realized that most people just preferred something that was simple and straight to the point. Because trust was a point of contention around insurance, users needed an app that was informative and had no extra frills.
Since working with Steve was the first experience with a client, I learned how to engage him in our design decisions and bring him into our process. This proved invaluable as our team was able to gain alignment with him from the beginning. Having said that, we could have rounded out the collaboration with Steve by more strongly avocating for more user testing. If I had more time beyond the three weeks, I would have set up a structure for the client by including a sample test plan and guiding him through running a usability test and pulling insights.
I believe our prototype is successful because we learned the importance of concept divergence. By bringing in innovative ideas, we made sure that we have covered a variety of bases to produce an app that users actually want to use. With the prototype we had produced, Steve was able to win a business pitch contest to bring in more funding for the app's development.
Working on Bonzah primed me for a project that required dealing with more ambiguity, Neopenda.