Ethnography of Insurance in Asia
Client: AXA Asia
My role: co-conducted field research and research synthesis, facilitated client co-creation workshops
Team: collaborated with the Anthropologists, marketing strategist, visual designer, and project lead from Nurun
Creative tool: Adobe Illustrator
Timeline: 8 months in 2015
Bring to life the ways in which people in the Asia region understand and purchase insurance at different life stages, and explore how insurance needs can be better addressed and serviced through digital transformation.
Context
Bring to life the ways in which people in the Asia region understand and purchase insurance at different life stages, and explore how insurance needs can be better addressed and serviced through digital transformation.
This project focused on 3 Asian markets: Thailand, Hong Kong, and Mainland China
Understand
Digital ecosystem, digital presence analysis, competitor analysis
After some desk research and stakeholder interviews, I mapped out the AXA regional digital ecosystem, which presented a holistic picture of the interactions and roles of all the AXA stakeholders and digital touchpoints.
In order to analyze AXA’s digital presence in different user journey stages - awareness, consideration, purchase, claim, and retention, I also mapped out the AXA digital presence analysis. Take the HongKong Market as an example:
To prepare for the competitor analysis, I started the initial functional and experience comparison of each digital touchpoint between AXA and its competitors, with the initial gaps and opportunities.
Empathize
Field research, diary, customer insight
In each market, we interviewed insurance holders (from both AXA and AXA competitors) and AXA distributors. Each insurance holder participated:
The first round of 1:1 customer interview - 1 hour long
The 5-day diary exercise as homework
The second round of 1:1 in-depth interview - 1.5 hour long
In the diary exercise, we asked each participant to answer some simple questions and track some activities, which helped us understand their:
Daily activity around transportation
Relationship with risk, protection, and insurance
Finance allocation behavior
Digital behavior
Examples of the dairy
Define
Persona, user journey
After we got back from the field research, we started to organize and analyze the rich material we got. As part of the research outcomes and material for the client workshops late on, we generated the personas and user journey.
The personas presented the different types of customers we’re designing for - based on their insurance knowledge levels, needs, and the roles of insurance.
Example of the personas of Hong Kong market
The user journeys highlighted the customer pain points and opportunities to improve throughout their journey with insurance.
Create
Co-creation workshop
In each market, we conducted a one-day co-creation workshop with the clients through a series of activities:
Persona & user journey gallery walk
Ideate future ideas and concepts
Cat-walk concepts and ideas
Vote on the top ideas
Select the most promising concept to prototype. The selected concept met the highest business needs and feasibility for developing in the near term
Client co-creation workshop