State Farm’s Drive Safe and Save app is a mobile telematics product that gives drivers a discount for signing up (about 5%), and then increases from there (up to 30%) based on how you drive. It monitors the route taken and miles driven, plus your speed, acceleration, braking, and steering.

The old app had an outdated front end design and backend infrastructure, which created several challenges:

• Setup was difficult, driving considerable call center volume.
• Trip data was inaccurate or missing.
• Feedback, like trip scoring and the earned discount, was not in real-time.
• 80% of the product team’s resources was spent on service and maintenance work.

The goal was to leverage a new telematics back end infrastructure and build a new front end experience to sit on top of it. When I took over as Creative Director, the designers were infighting and missing deadlines, the product manager was micro-managing them, and the quality of the work was suffering. My first step was to assess the root causes and make the necessary changes while earning the product manager’s trust. From there, we embarked on a ground-up redesign worthy of the State Farm brand.