Northwestern Mutual - 2022Long Term Care New Issue
Product Form & Presentation App
Overview
Northwestern Mutual is an American financial services mutual organization. In recent years, it has been pushing to develop and modernize tools that service and support advisors, insurance clients, and beneficiaries. Providing customized, modern tools is key to attracting, retaining, and renewing our clients and advisors.
Since 2022’s first quarter, my team and I’ve been working on migrating product forms from legacy system into the new illustration system. Long Term Care new issue is the first product being added using the new design framework.
Role
One of two UX Designers working with multiple cross-functional teams that included Business Analysts, Project Manager, Content Strategist, and other stakeholders. From ideating early concepts to delivering final assets for handoff.
Mission
Design new product form and presentation app screens using new design framework and provide guidance as the first product migrating into the new system.
Timeline
Q2 2022
Existing product and issues
The new issue product form is an essential form for any Financial Representative and Advisor. In order to access illustrations (policies), the FRs use the new system and still use the old system to conduct their tasks.
Our users fill out these forms to guide clients through a financial planning process — a unique prototype of policy to present to their clients.
However, not all of their policies have migrated over to the new system. NM’s company-wide initiative is to completely migrate all legacy into the new platform while improving and consolidating all of the old forms, data visuals, and designs.
Current Experience
Discovery
While we had a design system and existing experience to work off of, it was critical that we effectively decrease unnecessary spacing, minimize excessive modals, eliminate confusion on repetitive input fields, and identify where to place benefits information and business rules to prospective users who were new and veterans of the field force.
Hence, we analyzed previous research of Field Force Representatives in the field who use our platform daily to do their jobs.
We found that most users fill in the minimum required fields on the form to quickly view the projections for their prospective clients first, leaving out optional fields to add in afterwards (if necessary).
Design Decisions
The use of white space, simplified flows, and focused content design can be effective and beautiful for simplicity. However, our power users don’t need our platform to be pretty because it clashes with the needs of our administrators. Large sets of data and tables are the most used UI element. They need it to be information-dense to analyze and quickly make decisions.
As Product Managers and Business Analysts explored solutions and requirements, we kept those considerations in mind, based on the current flow and research insights.
Reduce white space and scrolling.
Display as much information as possible on screen.
Clear and predictable; balance needs of users while retaining the Luna (design system) “look and feel”.
Content framework
1
Relative fields should be shown in the same line up (product info, personal info, policy benefits).
2
Repetitive fields and sections should be disabled on product form since user fills them out in CRM.
3
Output options from every product form will be consolidated in presentation app.
Initial Explorations
Option 1 - Add business rule to everything that needs more context (discount, multilife, benefits, policy).
Option 2 - Although business has decided to bring all output pages to presentation app, allow users to add illustration pages for presentation from product form.
Customize later - Select pages now in product form and customize pages later in presentation app.
Customize Now - Launch modal from product form in work mode and make adjustments.
Option 3 - Remove long copy of business rules and find balance of obvious info for regular FRs, info required by law to show to clients, and new info for new FRs. Hide info in tool tips and add option to see more info.
While option 1 and 2 were great from a user experience perspective, option 3 was chosen as the preferred solution by the product team since it was more information dense, eliminated the unnecessary tool tips / guidelines, and consolidated all output into one location, the presentation app. This was considered a more scalable option without interrupting the current flow for LTC new issue.
MVP Design
During this time, Term new issue product form was also receiving research and feedback on the product form. Since both forms use components from Luna design kit and are similar in steps/process, we took this into consideration while creating the final design for hand off.
Although the customized components were simple for the user to use and decreased scrolling time by displaying more information in the screen, we decided to create a more consistent experience in both product forms and for future product forms. We replaced the customized components with something existing in the Luna design kit, flat extras.
Navigate easily to your section
By consolidating and reducing repetitive fields from the NIS form, sections were reduced to three parts. Users can now easily see as much information as possible on screen.
To reduce scrolling, the jump navigation on the left panel enables users to move up and down the form with relative ease. Sections are prominently featured and does not sacrifice siginificant screen real estate.
Need more information? No problem.
New or experienced FRs who use this product form will have the option to view important information in tool tips. It appears upon mouse hover or keyboard focus state and shows additional information related to a specific input field to provide additional help when defining an item or term.
To avoid overloading users with information during the initial screen, contextual tool tips were brought in to offer advice as users navigate through the form and discover its meaning and function along the way.
Flat Extras & Error States
Relevant errors notify the user and is presented in the context of what they are doing in a required field. Informative and brief messages are used to communicate action-based responses to help users understand how to address the error. Messages are also kept concise and succinct to reserve space and prevent text wrapping.
Future Release
The new product form in Luna is in build and will be released in in Q1 2023. During testing, we found that the Field Representatives understood the flow of the form and how to use its intuitive features, especially with the animation, saw them as simple to use, responsive, convenient with a logical interface.
With the addition of Term New Issue and its positive feedback, we adjusted both forms to accomplish the users’ desired purpose. In general, FRs felt confident to make a decision to accept the new experience after they familiarized themselves with the new interface. We were able to see users seamlessly transition to Luna and increase usage of the forms and screens during usability testing which validates our design.
Next Steps
With the great success of the new form, the immediate next steps were to build a small component for the user to refer to state information without launching another tab for states information. Additionally, we’re considering simplifying the process for FRs to present with a live preview of their Illustrations based on their input before clicking present.