5-Day Design Sprint

Situation

To tackle the challenge of improving Slide’s claims process, our team conducted a week-long Google Ventures Design Sprint at Slide HQ in Tampa, Florida. The goal was to collaborate closely with Slide’s executives and insurance experts to create a seamless online claims workflow. As the lead designer, I facilitated stakeholder discussions, sketched wireframes, and led user testing sessions.

Key questions we aimed to answer during the sprint:

• How could we create an online workflow that could handle more volume than our reps?

• Will this be faster than a phone call?

• How will we bring our older demographic onboard?

Task

The objective of this sprint was to design and validate an online claims process that:

1. Simplified the user flow, ensuring new and existing users could file claims effortlessly.

2. Increased efficiency by reducing time spent navigating the claims process.

3. Established a scalable design system that could support Slide’s future growth.

Action

To execute this sprint effectively, we followed a structured approach based on the Google Ventures framework:

Understanding

We kicked off the sprint at at Slide HQ in Tampa, Florida in a room full of executives and relevant stakeholders for this projdct. As a team, we defined the long-term goals for the project and mapped out the potential design challenges we may face along the way.

In roundtable-fashion, we gave the experts the time to talk about their insights and clarify the problem were were looking to solve.

Sketch

The following day, we distilled all of out notes from Day 1 into a single board we can all take inspiration from. As part of their homework, the experts were asked to share screenshots and websites for inspiration. This ranged from the websites of direct competitors, to standalone UI from a random app or website that they liked.

With our notes distilled and somewhat of a direction to follow, we each sketched potential solutions for the ideas. Our goal was to keep the ideas as wide-ranging as possible to cover more ground.

Decide

As a group, we went around the room and each reviewed and critiqued the sketches. Once everyone shared, we all got to vote on the best ideas. These ideas would then be Frankensteined together into a storyboard that represented the optimal experience the experts were after.

Prototype

Over the course of 24 hours, our internal team turned the storyboard into a realistic, functional prototype that could be put in the hands of the experts the following day. The focus of this prototype was to make it look real enough for the users without perfecting every single detail.

For the sake of speed, we used Tailwind CSS as our UI framework to generate as many out-of-the-box components as we possibly could.

Test

On our last day of the design sprint, we brought in individual experts and stakeholders to interact with the prototype. We formatted these tests as moderated usability test to gather as much insight as we could about the new user experience. Seeing that the goal of Slide was to onboard hundreds of thousands of new users, we felt this was the proper method to use.

“The way it's laid out makes it really to know which payments are due” - usability test participant

Not surprisingly, we left the tests with more questions than answers. Several more questions arose, including:

“Does it send a receipt or anything like that to me?”

“Will it save my progress if I close the screen and come back to it later?

“Is there a reference number if I have to call about my application”

Development and Refinement

The sprint resulted in us landing a half-million dollar contract with Slide and continuing to build out the production-grade version of this new application. After the sprint I transitioned back into my role as lead designer, and over the course of three months I continued supporting my team and communicating with the Slide team to refine and optimize the claims process.

Key efforts as the design lead included:

• Iterative Design Refinement: Weekly design reviews and updates based on user feedback.

• Scalability: Expanding the design system to include new components and guidelines.

• Compliance and Performance: Ensuring adherence to WCAG 2.1 AA standards, fast load times, and industry regulations.

Working with Slide's stakeholders, we were able to agree on several KPIs to measure to call this project a success for the both of us.

Result

After the three-month extension, we were able to test, stage, and launch the production version of the Slide app and get it into the hands of thousands of users. We worked with their technical team to implement analytics before launch, and we were able to see some significant improvements compared to their old process:

• 60% Time Reduction: Claims processing time dropped from 20 minutes to just 8 minutes.

• 47% Fewer Support Calls: The self-service system reduced dependency on human representatives.

• Scalable Design: A reusable design system ensured consistency and streamlined future development.

“This new system will save our reps so much time—it’s a game changer for efficiency.” - CEO of Slide.

These improvements not only saved users time but also positioned Slide as a leader in efficient claims management, setting the foundation for long-term digital transformation.

About a year after launching the new Slide app and onboarding users, we heard about the awesome news that they acquired rights to 86,000 more users. This further validated our work as a streamlined and scalable process for Slide's future.