The process to create an account on statefarm.com has historically contained enough friction to result in adoption rates that are well below industry average for a modern insurance company. Partly to blame is that the process required customers to either know or find their insurance policy number to get started. Other culprits were the unusual user name and password requirements and a poor implementation of a third-party, security question service.

It was an urgent leadership priority to fix these architectural friction points and also modernize the design. In order to embark on this endeavor, I had to deepen UX’s engagement with the product team, teaching them about UX and earning their trust, while at the same time, quickly leading them towards a common, shared understanding of the opportunities we saw.

A lot of industry research went into best practices, in addition to user research to answer foundational questions, like whether users preferred all the steps on one page, or did they prefer a more conversational approach. The feedback definitively lead us to a more conversational solution with content that has a warm, friendly tone.