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Westfield Insurance : Driving Efficiency Across Underwriting, Design, and Customer Experience

Overview

Westfield Insurance is a trusted provider of commercial and personal insurance. During my time there, I collaborated with cross-functional teams to identify underwriting pain points, propose improvements for internal tools, define a potential paperless flow, and pioneer the company's first design system. 

Context

Full-time internship

Timeline: May - Nov 2024

Team

UX (6 Designers)

PMs, POs, SCRUM Master, Developers, QAs, & Business stakeholders

My role

User Research

Wireframing

Design System

Prototyping

Requirements Gathering

#1: Underwriting Research

GOAL

Understanding underwriters' workflows and identifying their pain points

An underwriter evaluates insurance applications to determine eligibility, coverage terms, and pricing based on risk assessment.

Westfield underwriters utilize multiple tools in their workflows, including internal applications for portfolio management, task management, and an information hub, as well as external systems for critical data (e.g. policy information and claims history). The Design team conducted Research with the ultimate goal of improving the underwriter's experience.

KEY FINDINGS

Underwriters struggle with accuracy and efficiency due to fragmented data and repetitive tasks arising from the use of multiple systems.

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Underwriter journey as they work on renewal

PROCESS

1. Interview & Observation

10+ interviews and observation sessions with underwriters to capture their thoughts and behavior as they worked through their process.

2. Analysis & Synthesis

200+ data points into:

  • 10 key themes for Affinity Mapping

  • 2 Journey Maps

3. Validation & Iteration

Met with underwriters again to validate and made iterations to the map.

4. Findings Sharing

Shared research findings with PMs from Westfield internal products: multiple systems that don't communicate effectively force underwriters to navigate numerous touchpoints. Underwriters' sentiment is lowest when:

  1. Gathering policy information from various sources

  2. Prioritizing renewals 

  3. Documenting underwriting decisions

5. Solutioning Workshops

Facilitated workshops with PMs and business stakeholders to explore potential solutions for 2025 roadmaps:

  • Minimizing touchpoints: improving data transfer between tools

  • Optimizing renewal management: implementing a new prioritization feature within the portfolio management system

  • Reducing repetitive tasks: streamlining documentation across systems

KEY LEARNINGS

The need to constantly learn, adapt, and refine skills in this dynamic UX field

Conducting impactful user research

I learned how to observe underwriters’ workflows, synthesize qualitative insights, and translate findings into actionable tools like journey maps. Seeing how raw user data directly influenced design decisions taught me the value of grounding solutions in real user pain points.

Building a scalable design system from scratch

Creating Westfield’s first design system was a crash course balancing consistency and flexibility. I discovered how a design system truly works, what it entails, and why it is so crucial to have not only designers but developers to build a successful and scalable system.

Thriving in an agile, iterative environment

Working within a Scrum team taught me that design isn’t a linear process—it evolves alongside business needs and technical realities. From daily stand-ups to sprint planning, I learned to adapt to shifting priorities, embrace incremental progress, and advocate for user-centered solutions even when faced with tight timelines or legacy systems.

#2: Design System

GOAL

Building Westfield's first design system to streamline product development across teams, improving design consistency and user experience

While working on the Underwriting Research project, I observed underwriters expressing frustration that Westfield’s three internal products lacked visual and functional cohesion due to inconsistent component behaviors and UX patterns.

Through further research, I identified two root causes:

  1. Each product was built on different back-end systems, causing teams to reinvent the wheel by creating their own components instead of reusing what already existed in other systems.

  2. Designers lacked a shared style guide, leading to inconsistent design decisions.

This inconsistency resulted in inefficiencies during stand-ups, as teams spent significant time debating component designs, behaviors, and even color choices. Recognizing the impact on both design and development workflows, I initiated a project to build a unified design system, aiming to streamline processes and create a cohesive experience across products.

PROBLEM

How might we align Product and UX teams to create and adopt a cohesive design system that scales?

SOLUTION

Establishing design system foundations with the UX team while engaging with developers early to ensure successful adoption

Screenshot 2025-02-03 at 23.56.57.png

Color Tokens & Example Components (Button, Tag, Date Picker)

PROCESS

1. Auditing Existing Products

Conducted a comprehensive audit of Westfield’s three internal products to identify key components, inconsistencies in UX patterns, and areas of inefficiency. This helped prioritize which components to standardize first.

2. Industry Best Practices Research

Studied design systems from other companies to understand scalable approaches, governance models, and implementation strategies.

3. Design Tokens

Created foundational design tokens (e.g., colors, typography, spacing). These tokens were reviewed and refined collaboratively with the UX team.

4. Components

Created reusable components (e.g., buttons, tags, modals) in Figma using the design tokens. Conducted iterative reviews with the UX team to ensure usability and alignment with user needs.

5. Tech Stack Alignment

Collaborated with developers to ensure the design system could integrate seamlessly with existing back-end systems. This included aligning on using Storybook for component documentation and testing.

6. Accessibility

Integrated accessibility guidelines into the design system, including color contrast ratios, keyboard navigation, and ARIA labels.

7. Adoption Plan

Worked with Product Managers to define a rollout plan, including timelines for adoption and processes for maintaining the design system as products evolve.

Next up...

#3: Paperless Service Design

GOAL

Defining ideal flows for customers to go Paperless within the technical capabilities of Westfield's systems

Westfield currently relies on physical mailing for all customer documents (e.g.  Declaration Pages, ID cards, and invoices). The company sought to explore how Personal Lines customers could receive these documents digitally.

Besides the main flow, I also focused on edge cases, such as Preference Changes and Hard-copy Requests.

PROCESS

1. Requirements Gathering

Engaged with business stakeholders to define project goals, scope, and timelines.

Conducted research on industry best practices and competitor approaches to paperless document delivery.

2. Ideation

Developed initial user flows for new and existing customer paperless opt-in.

3. Validation & Iteration

Collaborated with Solution Architects, Data, and Legal teams to refine user flows, incorporating edge case scenarios and ensuring alignment with technical and legal requirements.

4. Stakeholder Review & Recommendations

Presented the refined user flows to business stakeholders, highlighting key recommendations and gathering final feedback. Recommendations focused on validating customer data linkages and backend integrations.

WHY IS PAPERLESS IMPORTANT?

Up to 32% decrease in negative customer sentiment

Customer Care reports a high demand for paperless options, with frequent customer dissatisfaction when not available.

Saving $X million in operational cost

Going paperless saves on printing, postage, and storage costs.

Improving relationship with agents

Westfield relies on a network of agents to distribute its insurance products. Agents have stated frustration with handling the significant volume of paper documents.

Reducing paper waste and carbon footprint

Going paperless reduces waste, demonstrating corporate responsibility through eco-conscious, paper-free operations.

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User flows for Paperless Opt-in

And other projects...

#4: Wireframing, Redesigning, & More

During my internship, I had the opportunity to contribute to various smaller projects, including the redesign of an internal tool, prototyping a customer-facing portal, conducting a heuristic evaluation of a third-party tool, and participating in a UX metrics initiative.

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THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS FAR DOWN!

Still interested? Check out more of my work!

On to the next project...

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