BOBBY KING

Case study: digital transformation at Royal London

I redesigned Royal London's B2B protection protal then supported a discovery project to relaunch their flagship retirement and pensions products.

The brief

In 2015 Royal London were ready to modernise their online service with a new application for Protection insurance. In the Pensions division the #thinkbeyond project was looking at transforming the online customer experience.

What I did

I used a combination of user research, UI design and rapid prototyping to get buy-in from key stakeholders and help transform the company.

Simplifying a customer dashboard with user research

I worked with a user researcher to create personas for financial advisers and their administrators. We validated these with contextual enquiries (office visits). I used these to simplify a dashboard into a table of applications and a prominent ‘New application’ button.

The original design I was given had an unnecessary ‘Updates’ table and a right-hand column with extra contact information. Good design involves getting rid of unnecessary elements and focusing on the essentials.

Relaunching a service with responsive design

When I arrived at Royal London the product owners would pass requirements directly to developers without considering how to make the journey usable and attractive.

I worked with a visual designer to incorporate the company brand then worked with business analysts to develop a run of screens. I started with paper sketches then built these up into high-fidelity designs.

Before the launch, we validated these by visiting financial advisers in their offices and running usability testing. After the launch the new service took in over £1 million pounds of new business per week. We presented our work to the CEO Phil Loney.

Capturing ideas with rapid prototyping

In the #thinkbeyond project I supported two Discovery teams looking at ways of relaunching Royal London’s online Pensions service. I worked with subject matter experts to define customer journeys and capture pain points. To capture each team’s ideas I created prototypes of new online calculators and apps.

We validated our ideas by running a programme of customer engagement which put Royal London in close contact with their end users for the first time.

The outcome

Royal London increased their market share and picked up four awards in the 2016 FT Online Innovation and Service awards, including Best Company, and Best Innovation for the new service. The service takes in over £1 million of new business every week. Our team presented the new design to CEO Phil Loney.