DEFINING THE DESIGN OF AN INSURANCE PRODUCT
Industry :
Insurance
Size :
Big Corporate
Timeline :
6 Weeks
An insurance provider, with ambitions to innovate in a saturated market, set out to launch a new product tailored to modern customers. Insurance, traditionally perceived as complex, distant and transactional, needed to be redefined as clear, human, and trustworthy.
To succeed, the company needed to ensure the product was designed not from assumptions, but from customer truth. Through a series of structured research processes, ranging from Jobs to Be Done Interviews to a Concept Reality Check, the initiative aimed to align customer needs, market opportunities, and business priorities into one future-ready design anchored in customer truth and balanced with business feasibility.
01
Validate the Jobs to Be Done of the insurance product.
02
Perform a Competitor & Benchmark X-Ray to assess the market.
03
Define User Personas & Archetypes to guide design.
04
Use Feature Prioritization Research to focus development.
Insurance customers today are informed, cautious, and expect clarity and trust before making decisions. Launching an insurance product without evidence-driven validation carries high risks:
Customers may not understand or value the product.
Features may not solve the most relevant jobs in their lives.
Competitors could outpace with simpler, more appealing offerings.
Also, the existing product development process risked being guided by internal assumptions rather than lived customer realities.
The consequences of not addressing this gap were significant implications:
Missed opportunities to connect with emerging customer segments.
Risk of launching a product that lacked relevance or clarity.
Potential financial and reputational costs of underperforming products.
Customer Truth at the Core (Customer Truth Sessions, Jobs to Be Done Interviews)
Evidence-Driven Design (User Personas & Archetypes, Feature Prioritization Research)
Market Context Awareness (Competitor & Benchmark X-Ray, Opportunity Radar)
Validation Before Launch (Concept Reality Check)
01
Conduct Customer Truth Sessions to uncover authentic customer needs and expectations.
02
Map User Personas & Archetypes to capture diverse behaviors.
03
Conduct Jobs to Be Done Interviews to align product purpose with life needs and to ensure the minimum requirement to be fulfilled by the insurance service.
04
Apply Feature Prioritization Research to define the most impactful features.
05
Perform a Competitor & Benchmark X-Ray to understand industry standards and gaps, and the consumer trends.
06
Execute an Opportunity Radar to identify areas for innovation and uplift.
07
Validate the final product with a Concept Reality Check to ensure relevance and feasibility.
Translating complex insurance terms into customer-friendly insights.
Balancing regulatory requirements with customer simplicity.
Managing internal resistance to feature deprioritization.
This project demonstrated the power of research to de-risk innovation and bring insurance closer to customer lives. By anchoring design in customer truth, validating jobs to be done, and balancing business realities with customer desires, the client laid the foundation for an insurance product that is clear, relevant, and future-ready.
Lasting Change & What Might Comes Next
This section defines how the internal team can carry the impact forward once our project concludes.
By embedding these methods into regular processes, the client can transform research from a one-time exercise into a continuous engine of better decisions, building stronger customer connections, and sustainable growth.
Embed ongoing Customer Truth Sessions in product development.
Establish regular Feature Validation Sprints to validate customer needs and product definition.
Build ongoing Opportunity Radar and Continuous Competitive Intelligence reviews into product strategy.
Maintain a live set of User Personas & Archetypes.
Repeat Concept Reality Checks for future iterations.
Governance to ensure research remains a decision-making anchor.
Apply the same methodology to future insurance product lines.
Use Opportunity Radar as a continuous lens for innovation to maintain differentiation.
Refresh personas and competitor benchmarks regularly to adapt to market change.
Scale the Jobs to Be Done framework across all customer journeys.
