Fifteen years without an update
Shelter’s logged-in experience hadn’t changed in 15 years. Customers could pay bills and pull ID cards, but even simple tasks felt cumbersome.
As a newly promoted designer, I saw a chance to turn a static homepage into a dashboard for 100,000+ monthly customers.
“It feels like I’m just looking at a list. I can see my policies, but I can’t tell what I should do here.”
Everything looked important, so nothing was
Before designing, I went through past research in our repository. Three patterns kept coming up:
From a list to a dashboard
The shift was treating the homepage as a dashboard instead of a list. I designed mobile-first, because the smallest screen forced me to decide what mattered most.
The hard part was deciding what to hide
My first iteration showed everything in two columns. I brought it to design critique, and the feedback was direct:
“There’s a lot happening, I’m not sure where to look first. Which of these things actually need my attention?”
I rebuilt it as a priority-based card system: urgent actions like overdue payments and open claims come first, details are disclosed progressively, and promotional cards (paperless billing, feedback, roadside coverage) only appear after critical tasks.
One bill, one card
Customers with home and auto policies couldn’t tell what they owed in total.
“Wait, so do I owe $150 total, or is that just for my car insurance?”
My first payments design put an overdue card and a total-due card side by side. The two amounts competed, and two payment buttons left people unsure which one to press.
The final design uses a single card that consolidates every due bill, overdue first. When a payment is already scheduled, a friendly “You’re all set — no action required” removes the doubt. Full details live on the payments page.
Road Assist, one tap away
People open an insurance site on their phone for different reasons, often urgent ones.
Designed alongside the team
Another designer was building a dedicated policy management experience. We shared research and brought her policy list into the dashboard so both felt like one product. I pulled policy data and found most customers have 3 or fewer, which set how many the dashboard shows.
Engineering told me each policy needs separate API calls for payments, claims, and details. Instead of a generic spinner, I designed loading skeletons that hold the page’s hierarchy while data arrives.
Launched, then measured
After 10+ usability tests and multiple iterations, the dashboard launched to Shelter’s 100,000+ monthly customers, with ID cards viewable and printable from the policy overview.
The data found a trade-off
Most metrics improved, but proxy signatures dropped year over year. Proxy voting was easier to understand, yet moving it down the page hurt discovery.
I designed a proxy card that appears right after urgent tasks, keeping it visible without breaking the hierarchy. Legal has approved it, and we’ll keep watching signature rates as it launches.
Clarity isn’t the same as visibility
The proxy drop taught me that making something easier to understand doesn’t help if people never reach it. Placement is a design decision with its own consequences.
As my first project after promotion, it also taught me to bring work to critique early and to keep measuring after launch, since that’s where this trade-off surfaced.
