Case Study
Service
Product Design, UX Strategy, Interactive Prototyping, User Research & Testing
Timeline
Nov 2024 - Dec 2024
Brief
HSBC Life app is designed to help users manage their life insurance and related financial products offered by HSBC. In this case study, I focused on improving the user experience of the HSBC Life app, aiming to boost user engagement and streamline the claim process.
As part of a learning experience, this case study primarily focuses on research and improving an app from scratch.
Identifying the problem
Before starting the project, a variety of user reviews provided insights from multiple perspectives. The goal is to identify, define and validate the core issues.
To lay a strong foundation, I will begin by documenting several assumptions to serve as a guide to structure my initial understanding of the users' needs, challenges, and goals while interacting with the app.
HSBC Life’s direct and indirect competitors provide their customers with quick access to policy information on their app home pages and allow customers to file their claim seamlessly.
Evaluation & user research
Here I conduct a few hypotheses to define the key factors influencing customer behavior, validate the insights from the case study, and support the conclusions drawn from the market analysis.
HYPOTHESIS #1
Confusing policy criteria
Users will be conflicted if they are eligible for subsidies on specific treatments and facilities.
HYPOTHESIS #2
Too many steps
The process is overly cumbersome and includes unnecessary and repetitive steps, which increases the likelihood of users becoming frustrated and abandoning it.
User insights
With a total of six interviewees aged 22 to 64, the results have shown about people's expectations of the app and their challenges they faced:
Confused buttons & functions
Does not know how much exactly coverage can cover
User prefers a faster and straightforward experience, with less restrictive options
Personal information feels unnecessary to fill after registration / login
PROBLEM #1
Improve structure of dashboard
To keep things easy and reachable, so that users can easily find what they are looking for
PROBLEM #2
Keep process simple
Users can have the flexibility with more options, to choose special conditions if specified. Users can also continue their claim if app restarts or if user drop off
How might we make the claim process convenient for existing users to increase retention?
Meet our users
PRIMARY PERSONA
Casual visitor
A recent adopter seeking for convenience, he values the flexibility to make medical, TCH and dental claims covered by his company.
A new flow was introduced in to home page, to simplify the amount of steps needed and a more accessible path for users to navigate and claim easily.
Guiding principles and framework
Friendly copy, interactive components, and illustrations create a welcoming, user-centric experience, moving away from a corporate feel.
Create a clean, consistent interface that reduces steps for an intuitive, seamless navigation experience.
Direct calls to action for claims and flexible input criteria ensure easy access for all users.
Leveraging Figma, Material Design 3.0, and Android Studio, the design builds on HSBC and Android’s UI components for a familiar and consistent experience.
To test the two key issues identified by the interviewees, I reached out to them again to test the prototype using the same scenario.
Overall, the new process are relatively useful to new users. A few exceptions were observed and worked on to help improve the usability and experience of the app.
Dashboard
After testing, 40% of users either don’t use or struggle to locate the file claim button on the home page, with many noting that it appears irrelevant of what they're supposed to claim for. These are the various designs I've tried and did not make the cut.
Claim type
Final Design
All you need in your homepage
Consequently, the bottom navigation was eliminated, simplified into one unified dashboard. The homepage is now subjected and catered for each policy instead.
Improved steps for claim
The process has been simplified from six steps to four. Recurring information is automatically filled in upon login, so users no longer need to enter it again. Additionally, users can now easily edit their entries before submission for added convenience.
My claim history
Now, people can see their history and can be notified of their status update.
Results
With the new revamped experience, new and existing users from before liked the updated process and simplicity of finding the claim result and usefulness of the categorisation in the history tab. Overall, we had:
22 average clicks from start to end
1:30 minutes of claim time
Rating of 4.5 out of 5 for overall experience
Learnings and conclusion
The HSBC Life app was redesigned to address all the problems and pain points that were brought to light through research. The app now allows users to access their policies easily and also file a claim comfortably.
There are a lot of learning curves, mostly on understanding the uses and importance of each component, how it reflects the experience and learning to apply them correctly. All in all, it has helped me understand user behaviors and patterns, and the importance of the UX process as a whole. Special thanks to Material 3.0, the Figma community and Zack Chia for his teachings at Vertical Institute.
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