Founded in 2021, Scalelabs creates end-to-end solutions for partners across various industries, serving large clients such as Aspire Insurance in the US. Projects typically span several months to a year and encompass all aspects of the product development process, from market analysis and design to development, ensuring impactful outcomes throughout.

The objective of this project was to improve a solution previously developed by a consultancy to streamline the release process for Aspire's insurance agents. In the US, the insurance industry operates similarly to a multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme, meaning that incorrectly released agents' commissions were sent to their previous agency rather than to Aspire, but agents always received the same commission amounts.

My design goal was to provide clear visibility of system status and deliver actionable information to admins to reduce agent release times and reduce the frequency of errors.

As Senior Product Designer, I achieved this through multiple cross-functional workshops, where we gathered expertise from both Aspire admins and our in-house developers to refine the solution.

The initial product from the previous design agency provided some visibility into agent status but lacked key information. It focused only on registration progress, ignoring critical blockers outside the form needed for release. Views also failed to explain why a carrier was blocked, only showing that it wasn’t submitted.

Given our limited background knowledge and reference material, I decided to start by validating assumptions. This approach enabled us to progressively build a solid knowledge base that would inform the design of the UI and workflows.
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After each assumption was validated or invalidated, I identified the next steps to move the platform closer to our end goal of enhancing system status visibility and reducing errors.

Our first assumption test revealed that Aspire admins lacked sufficient information to unblock agents in the release process. They not only struggled to identify the specific blocker, but also couldn’t determine how the agent was blocked based on their records.

These insights led us to our initial design: a notification system that was direct and actionable, providing admins with clear guidance on how to follow up and resolve the issue.

Unfortunately, even with notifications, we noticed blocked agents slipping through the cracks, which inspired the next assumption tests.

For our next assumption test, we realized that Aspire admins preferred to address blockers as soon as they arose. For example, if they noticed a required document was missing for an agent, they would call or email them immediately.

So, we asked ourselves: why wasn’t it the same for notifications in the digital platform?

After conducting additional continuous discovery interviews, we discovered that Aspire admins experienced a mental disconnect when comparing the digital process to the traditional paper process. The platform notifications lacked a clear call to action, which meant the information often went in one ear and out the other for admins.

Based on the previous agency's work, the entire team and I mistakenly assumed that the process couldn't be fully digitized, only tracked digitally.

Thankfully, this wasn’t the case. It turned out that only some aspects of the process couldn't be digitized, so our next steps were to map out all possible processes and prioritize them based on frequency and severity of errors.

From there, my next steps were to compile and synthesize our learnings to revitalize the Aspire admin platform.

Based on the previously stated design principles and goals, this was our solution.

Even as an initial solution, it performed much better than any of the previous iterations in usability testing. We just needed a few more things to make it perfect.

Just one month after our redesign, we saw significant results. Most notably, Aspire admin productivity for releasing agents improved greatly, thanks to enhanced tracking and the ability to take immediate action.