Product Design
UX Writing
Information Architecture
USAA proudly serves millions of military members and their families with insurance, banking, and investing services. They had a service that helped match relocating families with a real estate agent, but it was handled over the phone. They wanted to create a mobile-first digital experience to make this process more accessible, efficient, and intuitive (and maybe even a little fun!)
Main objectives
Digitize a service being handled over the phone: USAA was handling their agent match service over the phone. A customer would have to call them and give them all of their information (which could be misunderstood over the phone) and then wait up to a week for them to search for agents and make recommendations. The primary need for this project was to streamline and digitize the entire process, making it much more accessible and resulting in relevant and instantaneous recommendations.
Simplify the experience: Most USAA customers starting this process are likely military families relocating somewhere unfamiliar. This is a chaotic time, where a spouse will have to handle this process on their own within a relatively quick timeline, so one of my main objectives was to create an intuitive and efficient experience.
Reinforce USAA’s brand & their values: USAA has established a reputation of being trustworthy, reliable, and a part of their customers’ families. The core of this project was to add another dependable service to their offerings that provides support to their customers in a time of need.
Systematize data
I took a deep look at the current criteria they were collecting over the phone and organized it into cohesive categories. I didn’t want the experience to feel like an arbitrary form, but a well thought-out process with comprehensive logic behind it.
Additionally, this would allow USAA to evaluate data they are collecting to further educate business decisions down the line.
Make it fun
As this is a stressful time for their primary users, I wanted to gamify the process, in order to add a light-hearted feel that made the experience enjoyable and fun. I looked at popular apps with entertaining interactions to derive some inspiration.
Create a scalable design system
Utilizing their robust style and brand guide, I developed a design system within Sketch that would serve as their go-to-templates for mobile applications. I wanted to ensure consistency throughout future interations and projects, in order to uphold their brand standards.
The process
Rewriting the language: A big part of simplifying the flow and creating an intuitive experience was writing friendly and concise copy. We assessed all of the intake questions and compiled them into sections. We then rewrote the prompts clearly and pointedly, wanting to emote an amicable voice to make the users comfortable, and enforce the playful tone we were aiming for.
Organize & streamline the form fields: We immediately decided on a wizard experience because of the high number of intake questions. The most important part of this was to include a progress bar that clearly delineates to the user where they are within the process.
Design the system: Once the language and format of the questions were decided on, we quickly created high-level wireframes, and immediately moved into design. Using their comprehensive style and brand guidelines, I established a strong and impactful mobile app design pattern for them to use now and in the future.
The findings
We initially launched only the house buying flow as MVR, but as it was so successful, a few months later USAA signed additional contracts to finish out all other workflows for selling: buying & selling; and mortgage pre-qualification.
Users were incredibly impressed with the new digital experience, and USAA reported to us an increase in customer participation, and overall satisfaction with their agent match program from both users and agents alike.
USAA and the partners we worked with (Realogy and Cartus) were so impressed with our work we received a commendation from the CEO of Realogy highly praising our work and team.
