UScope Photo ID
Mobile app redesign for the property insurance industry
Who is UScope?
UScope’s Photo iD is a mobile app for insurance adjusters to quickly and easily photograph properties and generate inspection reports for expedited insurance company approval.
The Challenge
Insurance adjusters rely on UScope to expedite submitting their property inspection reports for approval. Faster approval would allow homeowners who have experienced damage to their homes faster financial relief. However, users reported it took them an average of 2 weeks to master the app.
Our design goal was to make the app easier to learn and to simplify user task flows. We also wanted to find areas of opportunity to increase the app’s value to UScope users
Role: UI Lead, UX Designer, UX Researcher
Timeline: 4 weeks
Tools: Figma, Trello, Slack
Heuristic Analysis
Understanding the current app's strengths and weaknesses was the first step in our process. We rated the current app based on heuristic values from 0-4. 4 is the highest rating and represents the highest severity.
Learnability and efficiency of task completion were the main problem areas we had to address to improve the app’s usability for our users.
Main Issues
Navigation
A lack of a bottom navigation bar or familiar navigation patterns was confusing to UScope users
Photo Folders
Multi-step folder organization created a large learning curve for new users
Onboarding
The original app featured a 40 step onboarding process that was difficult for users to learn and retain.
Competitive & Comparative Analysis
Other apps in the property and insurance industry had simpler UI and used more familiar navigation patterns.
UScope’s benefit, however, was that it was the only app for the insurance adjuster niche and was the cheapest option on the market.
Persona: Property Pete
After conducting user interviews with 7 property inspectors in the insurance industry, we analyzed the patterns in their responses. Their primary concerns were learnability and intuitive photo organization for their reports.
We based our designs on the persona, Property Pete, to center our design decisions around UScope’s primary user
Pete is 37 years old lives in Austin, TX. He has been a property inspector for the insurance industry for the past 12 years.
Frustrations:
Low-quality photos on report
Small icons that are hard to understand
Overwhelmed by the amount of features on every page
Wasting time re-organizing photo folders and editing photo report
Needs:
I want all of my photos organized by room and structure
I need to quickly submit photo reports
I need an app that will be easy to learn for my coworkers.
User journey
Opportunity areas we found for improvement in the current app were
Camera & Photos: Users reported difficulty when moving photos into folders.
Generate Report: Users report frustrations at not being able to edit the report or quickly change photo order/comments within the report
Navigation Scheme
Redesigned information architecture to be more intuitive for our users. We utilized an open card sort to establish the features on every page.
Initial Iterations
Simplified UI and familiar use of icons. Simple task flows.
Designs
Assignments Page
The visual design was cluttered and did not make projects immediately recognizable to our users.
We focused on a cleaner and more minimal design, prioritizing Assignment imagery and legibility of project details.
Assignment Detail
The assignment page was a key page our users had trouble with, so we dissected what about it was most challenging for them.
Users were overwhelmed by unclear icons and the amount of actions available on this page.
User interviews revealed that users needed to generate reports and organize their photo folders on this page so we prioritized those tasks through clear design and recognizable icons.
Designed a clear CTA (Generate Report) and housed other ancillary options within the menu in the header.
Camera
We updated the camera layout by housing all camera options within an organized toolbar, and a designing a folder drop down menu so it would be easier to organize photos into the correct albums while users were taking them.
Homepage
We designed a homepage for UScope users to orient them around a familiar social media design pattern.
From the homepage, they were able to access their latest projects, view their schedule for the day, map out their route, and check-in with collaborators.
This was the main opportunity area to add value for users by integrating new useful features.
Photo Folders and Edits
It was very important to users to be able to organize the photos within each folder. We added an edit toolbar within the edit function of each album for users to delete or move photos to other folders.
Interactive Onboarding
We designed an interactive tutorial for UScope users to learn the app’s features by completing actions the first time they got to new tasks within the app.