📈 Key Outcomes

❗ The Problem

💡 The Solution

🔍 Exploration & Research

📊 Survey

To establish a baseline understanding of adjuster workflows, we began with a brief survey across junior and senior roles. The goal was to identify consistent patterns around where time was lost, which steps felt most fragile, and how adjusters balanced speed, accuracy, and visibility during high-volume claim work. Early results revealed that 73% of adjusters used three or more tools to complete a single claim, 68% re-entered information in multiple places, and 61% were not fully confident they always knew the next required step.

👉🏼 Key Survey Questions

• “How many tools do you use in a typical day when working a claim?”
• “How often do you re-enter the same information in more than one place?”
• “How confident are you that you always know the next required step on a claim?”

These responses gave us a quantitative snapshot of the most common pain points — fragmentation, repetitive input, uncertainty around next steps, and limited visibility. In fact, 57% reported inconsistent visibility into claim status or history. That data grounded the one-on-one interviews that followed and later gave the Discovery Workshop concrete numbers behind the stories on the wall.

🎙️ Interviews

Building on the survey findings, we conducted one-on-one interviews with adjusters and team leads to understand the context behind the numbers — how they work, where they struggle, and which workflows create the most friction. Many themes echoed the survey results, with nearly 70% describing daily workflow interruptions caused by scattered tools or unclear next steps.

Junior adjusters shared that the hardest part wasn’t the claims themselves — it was remembering where information lived, what needed to happen next, and how to avoid missing key documentation steps. About 65% expressed hesitation around whether they were completing forms “the right way,” highlighting the need for predictable patterns and clearer guidance so they could move with more confidence.

Senior adjusters emphasized speed, accuracy, and visibility. Many described jumping between multiple tools, relying on memory, or keeping handwritten notes just to keep up with volume. Over half said the lack of integrated visibility slowed decision-making, especially during high-pressure periods. Their workflows were fast-paced and high-pressure — but the tools weren’t keeping pace with regulatory expectations.

Across interviews, adjusters described workflows that were fast-paced but supported by tools that felt fragmented and inconsistent. These stories gave us concrete scenarios to bring into the Discovery Workshop and early screen sketches.

👥 Personas

To keep decisions grounded in real adjuster needs, we distilled our research into two primary personas — a junior adjuster and a senior adjuster. Together, they framed the MVP around confidence for newer adjusters and speed plus visibility for experienced adjusters. These personas reflected trends seen in the data — for example, over 60% of junior adjusters needed clearer guidance, while nearly 70% of senior adjusters prioritized faster access to key information.

We used these personas as anchors in the Discovery Workshop, making sure every discussion balanced “Can a junior adjuster do this confidently?” with “Can a senior adjuster move quickly and stay in control?”. That lens kept prioritization focused on real people, not abstract user types, and ensured designs supported both day-to-day work and compliance obligations.

🛣️ Journey Mapping

With the research, survey insights, and personas in place, we zoomed out to the full claim lifecycle — from first notice of loss through closure. The goal was to see where adjusters were losing time, where context dropped, and where the system itself was creating friction rather than clarity. Early analysis showed that nearly 73% of delays occurred at transition points between stages, reinforcing the need for a unified, predictable workflow.

The journey map connected each stage of the claim to real actions, emotions, thoughts, pain points, and opportunities. It gave us a shared language for talking about the claim lifecycle and where adjusters felt the most friction — especially around documentation, communication, and regulatory checkpoints.

We used this map as an input to the Discovery Workshop, bringing it into the room so stakeholders could react to real scenarios instead of abstract requirements.

⭐ Discovery Workshop

After the survey, interviews, personas, and journey map, we brought adjusters, team leads, QA, and product stakeholders into a structured discovery workshop to turn research into clear MVP priorities. The goal was to align on where the current tools were breaking down, what a “good day” inside a unified claims platform should look like, and which constraints we had to design within. What surfaced in the workshop was a clear picture of disconnected workflows, communication gaps, and regulatory risks the MVP needed to tackle first.

We framed the session around the reality of high-volume, compliance-heavy claim work: adjusters juggling multiple claims, switching between systems, and balancing speed with accuracy under regulatory pressure. Using survey themes, interview quotes, and the claims journey map as inputs, the group mapped high-friction moments across the lifecycle and clustered them into the most critical problem areas to address in the first release.

👉🏼 MVP Priorities from the Workshop

• Centralized Workspace — Brought fragmented tools into a single, trusted place where claims, documents, communication, and tasks live together — addressing the 73% of adjusters who reported losing time navigating disconnected systems.
• Stronger Documentation & Communication — Introduced in-context notes, structured call logging, and audit-ready history attached to each claim — reducing the 63% of users who worried about missing required documentation.
• Automated Repetitive Work — Used smart defaults, validation patterns, and clearer signals for status, ownership, and next steps — directly addressing the 68% who cited repetitive input as a major slowdown.
• Guided, Predictable Workflows — Ensured junior adjusters gain confidence while senior adjusters maintain speed and visibility across a large caseload — supporting the 57% who said visibility and next-step clarity impacted performance.

👉🏼 Core MVP Workflows Defined

• Claim Intake to Triage — Capturing required data, validating completeness, and routing claims to the right adjuster with minimal re-entry.
• Working an Active Claim — Prioritizing to-dos, reviewing parties and documents, and updating statuses from a single workspace with clear regulatory checkpoints.
• Document Handling — Uploading, tagging, and associating documents to claims with clear feedback, traceability, and an audit-ready record.
• Communications & Notes — Logging calls, sending messages, and tying all interactions directly to the claim record.
• Escalations & Handoffs — Surfacing blockers early and ensuring ownership is clear as claims move between roles.

By the end of the session, the team shared a common understanding of what needed to change and why. We realized adjusters weren’t struggling because of capability — they were struggling because the tools weren’t supporting their workflows. That clarity gave the Claim Processing Application a focused, research-backed starting point and set up the next phase of work: ideation and wireframes grounded in real-world adjuster behavior.

🧠 Ideation & Strategy

📝 Sketching

To translate early concepts into direction the product team could react to, we explored several low-fidelity sketch options focused on the MVP’s highest-value components. Because stakeholders hadn’t aligned on structure yet, these sketches helped clarify whether the experience should lean toward a dashboard-style landing page or a more streamlined, claim-first workflow. This stage was intentionally fast — clarity over polish.

👉🏼 Exploration Directions Considered

• Option 1: Claims, To-Do's, and Documents — A dashboard-like layout combining active claims, task alerts, and documents. Stakeholders liked the visibility, but it was too dense for the MVP timeline and required more backend readiness than feasible.
• Option 2: Grouped To-Do's, Claims, and Documents — A simplified structure with task-level groupings. Clearer than Option 1, but still too dashboard-heavy and not aligned with junior adjusters’ need for sequential guidance.
• Option 3: Claims, To-Do's, Documents, and Messages — Introduced communication signals stakeholders appreciated, but still pointed toward a Phase II operational dashboard rather than an MVP workflow tool.

While each direction offered valuable signals, stakeholders clarified that these explorations were too dashboard-oriented for the MVP. What they needed was a focused, claim-first foundation — not broader operational visibility. That alignment reset the stage and guided the next round of sketches.

👉🏼 Final Structural Direction

• Claim Landing Page — Streamlined access to all claims with a clear To-Do panel.
• Claim Summary — High-level context paired with a dedicated documents view.
• Claim Details Workspace — Tabbed navigation (Summary, Parties, CCLDRRA+, To-Do's, Notes, Financials, & Vehicles) with a persistent documents panel.

These represent only a portion of the sketches created for the MVP. Every workflow screen — such as Notes, Parties, and Communication — went through iterative review, but the examples shown here highlight the core structural decisions that formed the backbone of the product.

With these foundational layouts aligned, we moved into mocks to validate navigation, information flow, and task sequencing. A brief wireframe review helped confirm structure, but the real clarity came once we began shaping high-fidelity screens grounded in the workflows defined earlier.

🎨 Mocks

Before moving into high-fidelity UI, we held a wireframe review to confirm screen structure, core navigation, and how major workflows connected. This step ensured alignment across stakeholders, BA, and engineering without overwhelming the process with too many low-fidelity iterations.

Once the structure was validated, we transitioned into hi-fi mocks where layout, spacing, interaction patterns, and early design-system components began to take shape. These mocks introduced clearer hierarchy, color, and visual cues — allowing teams to understand how adjusters would move through the system day-to-day.

👉🏼 Key MVP Mockups

• Landing Page (Claims + Filtering) — Consolidates active claims and task visibility into a clean workspace, introducing filtering to help adjusters quickly narrow down claims.
• Policy Request To-Do — A focused task view that surfaces required fields, policy information, and notes in a structured, scannable format — reducing confusion and improving task completion speed.
• Claim Summary & Documents — A dual-pane layout giving adjusters instant access to summary data while reviewing documentation, supporting faster decision-making and fewer context switches.

This phase created the bridge to visual design — where typography, color, and our evolving design system transformed these structural mocks into a polished, scalable interface that carried through all remaining screens.

✨ Visual Design

🎨 Color Palette

The palette was designed for heads-down, high-focus claim work while staying aligned with NARS’s brand identity. Deep blues and structured neutrals support long reading sessions, while semantic colors for alerts, success, and status are used sparingly so urgent items stand out without making the UI feel noisy. All colors were tested against WCAG 2.1 AA contrast, giving adjusters instant visual cues for urgency and state without adding extra cognitive load.

Primary

Secondary

Grayscale

🔤 Typography

While NARS traditionally used Optima Pro in print, the product team standardized on Barlow for the Claim Processing Application to better support screen-based, data-heavy workflows. Barlow’s open counters, generous x-height, and clean geometry create a clear hierarchy across tables, forms, and multi-column layouts — helping adjusters scan quickly without losing context.

A defined type scale for headlines, labels, and body copy keeps dense claim data legible and predictable, improving readability and reducing eye strain during long workdays. Together, these choices created a clean, predictable type system that supports dense claim data, long reading sessions, and WCAG-aligned sizing and contrast.

Barlow

⚙️ Design System

To keep the experience consistent as the product expanded, we built a modular Figma design system that unified color tokens, type styles, spacing, and reusable components into a single source of truth. This system acted as the bridge between design and engineering, ensuring every new screen shared the same structural language and interaction patterns — ultimately contributing to a 90% increase in development velocity.

With shared tokens wired into Angular builds, the team reduced design drift, improved handoff, and significantly increased development velocity as new modules were added — treating the Claim Processing Application as a repeatable framework, not just a collection of screens, while staying consistent, accessible, and on-brand.

To support faster iteration as the system evolved, we introduced AI-assisted workflows to help standardize design-system documentation and accelerate design updates following validation feedback. This allowed us to quickly generate component variations, apply token updates consistently, and keep the system aligned as new patterns were introduced — without slowing delivery.

Components

Together, color, typography, and the design system formed the visual backbone of the Claim Processing Application — giving adjusters a cohesive, accessible interface and setting the stage for the final screens, outcomes, and impact.

✅ Validation

🧪 Testing

We ran scenario-based walkthroughs of key workflows with Unit Managers and senior leaders, comparing early variants of screens for Calling, Notes, and Messaging. Sessions focused on how well the UI supported real claim work: capturing conversations, attaching documentation, and coordinating across adjusters without losing history. We captured qualitative feedback, friction points, and areas where users hesitated or created workarounds.

The goal was not pixel-perfect polish, but to confirm that the MVP gave adjusters a trusted foundation to work from — even if deeper optimizations would come in Phase II. Feedback from these sessions directly informed a handful of focused updates before launch.

👉🏼 Findings from Testing Sessions

• Calling Workflow — Reviewers wanted the ability to capture call notes in real time and without breaking the workflow. The original pattern forced them to take notes elsewhere and update the claim later, increasing the risk of missed or incomplete details. They also requested an in-call dialpad to handle phone extensions, which is common when routing through multi-level phone systems.
• Document-Linked Notes — Notes stored only at the claim level made it difficult to see which comments tied to which documents. Leaders asked for a clearer connection between documentation and supporting notes so audits and handoffs felt more reliable.
• Multi-User Messaging — Conversation threads often involved more than one adjuster, but the original design assumed a 1:1 conversation. Stakeholders flagged the risk of fragmented history when adjusters had to start separate threads to keep others informed.

These findings confirmed that the core workflows were directionally right, but needed targeted adjustments to better reflect how adjusters collaborate in practice — especially around in-context documentation and shared communication history.

🔁 Iterations

Based on that feedback, we implemented a focused set of UX refinements that fit within the existing scope and engineering plan. Each change was selected because it improved day-to-day usability without requiring structural rework — keeping the MVP on track while meaningfully improving how adjusters would use the system on launch day.

Where appropriate, AI-assisted workflows were used to speed up design refinements and keep component updates consistent across screens as changes were validated.

👉🏼 Targeted UX Updates

• Calling Parties Update — Enhanced the Call in Progress panel with an inline note field and a built-in dial pad for extensions. Adjusters can now document the call as it happens and complete the interaction without leaving the claim — reducing the risk of missed or incomplete details.
• Document-Linked Notes Update — Moved note entry directly into the Documents workflow, allowing adjusters to add a note at the moment a file is uploaded or updated. Each note is now tied to a specific document, strengthening audit trails and giving new reviewers clearer context around why a document was added.
• Messaging Enhancements — Enabled adjusters to add another user to an existing message thread instead of starting a separate conversation. This keeps communication in a single, traceable history and better reflects how complex claims are coordinated across teams.

These iterations didn’t reshape the architecture, but they sharpened the day-to-day workflow in ways adjusters noticed immediately — clearer documentation, stronger audit trails, and collaboration patterns that matched real work. With those refinements in place, we were ready to move into the final MVP designs.

🚀 What’s Next

The MVP created a clear shift in clarity, efficiency, and predictability. What once felt fragmented now functions as a single, steady workflow adjusters can rely on. It’s a strong foundation — and it’s only the beginning.

Next up: Phase II — a deeper redesign focused on stronger navigation, more visible claim context, a smarter Landing Page, and expanding core features like Search, Reserves, and Payments. The goal? Turn a solid MVP into a powerful, everyday tool adjusters love.

⭐ Key Contributions & Reflection