Case Tracker
Improving on the everyday experience of using advisor tools at LFG.
Project Overview:
Shortly after joining the Lincoln Financial Group (LFG) design team in 2017, I was invited to participate on the weekly LFG Advisor Council panel. These panels served as mix of informal feedback sessions, opportunities to conduct structured user research inquiries, as well as a valuable glimpse into the minds of the users we’d be designing for.
The Case Tracker project involved updating the experience of how Advisors check on the status of a pending policy, something all of them did as part of their workflow and yet universally despised doing.
The Problem:
LFG Advisors need to check on the status of their pending policies throughout the day, usually while taking a call from one of their clients looking for an update. However the current status was buried deep into the page, and obfuscated by both poor placement and muddied visual design. I needed to quickly assess the existing experience, understand user feedback, then design and iterate a solution which served to improve their everyday workflow.
Client:
LFG
My Role:
Lead UI/UX Designer
Launched:
October 2018
Design Goals:
A. Making the latest status easy to access, at the top of the page.
B. Clearly distinguishing each status, making it ease to recognize at a glance.
C. Moving important policy details directly under the relevant steps.
UI Design & Testing:
Designing for accessibility and mobile breakpoints.
Keeping in line with Lincoln’s initiative to make all UX deliverables both accessible and responsive, it was important that I account for both sets of behavior while designing the tracker.
Accessibility: As is par for ADA compliance and best practices in accessibility testing, my designs were tested for things like screen reader compliance, tab navigation, color contrast, and text legibility. This was an important aspect of making sure the Case Status Tracker remained useful to all Advisors.
Mobile & Tablet Breakpoints: It was also important that we design a tracker which Advisors could quickly and efficiently check on their other work devices. Whenever constrained by space the tracker shifts to a vertical order and any points of user interaction drop below.
In Conclusion:
While simple to use and easy to understand at a glance, with the Status Tracker that was kind of the whole point.
This was a great example of a project where incorporating our users and their feedback early on in the design process enabled us to deliver exactly what they needed, on schedule and making an immediate and obvious difference in their workflow.