Digital Claims — Neil Dixon

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Neil Dixon

About

Neil Dixon

About

Building the Digital Claims Experience

Design Lead • January 2025 - November 2025

Overview

Design Lead for the end to end experience for the digital claims first notice of lost for Co-operators clients

Problem

The existing experience for clients who needed to submit a claim was a web form that collected little information, requiring claim representatives to manage most of the retrieval of information over the phone, sometimes over multiple days. This process created a disjointed claims submission experience for clients and required costly human resources to manage.

Goal

Design a claims submission experience that effeciently collected enough information to effectively support the triaging process to assign the correct claims representative to the claim. The end goal was to have claims be closed sooner, improving the NPS score for the company.

Comparables Analysis

To begin understanding what a great claims experience could look like, we conducted an audit of what existing claims experiences were in market. This allowed us to uncover what features and functionality we could propose to be in scope for our first release.

Comparabales Analysis Findings

Time ranges

As some clients may not know exact times when their incident occurred, competitors allowed ranges to be selected.

Maps integration

For users to identify where their incident occurred, such as on a highway or an intersection a google maps integration was used.

Damage selector

To let users visually identify where damage for their auto claim occurred, competitors had visual selection based on vehicle type.

Additional details text input

To support any other information that clients would want to communicate to claims representatives, additional details were optionally available at the end of the flow.

Defined User Journey

Based on our comparables analysis, review of backend required fields, and collaborative workshops with the client, we were able to identify a high level defined user journey that would meet the needs of the required questions to be answered and logical grouping and ordering of question sets.

Concept Testing & Tree Testing

Based off the competitive analysis, our team was able to mock up an end to end flow of a claims experience to validate the grouping of questions, functionality, and understand what other questions clients had during their claim submission experience.

Research goals

Glass repair workflow: Does glass repair being separated from claims submission resonate with users?
Auto & home claims workflow: Identify any questions within loss details that are difficult for users to answer.
Email notifications & Claims status: What level of detail do users expect to receive in an email for their claim? What information are users expecting to see on their online services account for their active claim?

In the backend system that holds claims, there are many different kinds and causes of loss that can be selected. To validate clients would be selecting the appropriate claim type, to get the correct question set, we conducted a tree test.

Tree Test Findings

Majority of users were able to correctly select the loss type for their scenarios for home and auto with some exceptions.

Auto scenarios had an overall success rate of ~ 88%
42% answered incorrectly for selecting a Wind related claim
Home scenarios had an overall success rate of ~ 84%
53% answered incorrectly for selecting a pipe rupture from freezing related claim

Auto Tree Testing Results

Overall users were able to identify the correct loss type for each scenario except for Wind being a challenge.

Home Tree Testing Results

Overall users were able to identify the correct loss type for each scenario except pipe rupture from freezing being a challenge.

Concept Test Findings

Key Highlights

Completion Rate

All users were able to understand and complete their eFNOL for both home and auto product lines.

Loss Identification

Users were able to correctly identify their loss type and find glass repair services.

Streamlined Inputs

Streamlined inputs like time ranges and an overview of policy details increased confidence and improved efficiency in the workflow.

Opportunities to Explore

Content Refinement

Refine content to improve clarity for areas in the workflow such loss type descriptions and help modal content.

Damage Selection

Continue to develop the damage selection experience to increase user clarity on selection and damage severity.

Transparent Timeline

Users preferred seeing a more detailed timeline what to expect next in their claims process post submission.

Auto Damage Selector

A key function of the digital claims experience that was found in our market scan that was aligned to be built in the experience was the visual damage selector. This functionality would be used for clients to identify the location and severity of damage to their vehicle.

Our first iteration of the damage selector was a visual of a flat lay of a vehicle, as we wanted to understand if users would be able to more easily identify all areas of a vehicle with it laid out. We had this concept in our end to end concept test in the discovery period of the project.

V1 Testing Insights

Usability Testing Report: March 5, 2025

Vehicle Type Illustration Groupings

Damage Selector Visual Illustration V2

Final Version

After many iterations our team landed on this final illustration with hover and selected states for damage. We also aligned with the client on definitions of levels of damage that would align to backend input mapping.

Outcome

Since launch in November 2025, clients have had a ~ 73% success rate submitting claims for both home and auto. Claims representatives are able to process claims faster, and direct claims to specialized services more efficiently.