The Micro-Dashboard That Makes Sense of It All

Research + Design

→ Research

Because of insurance liability rules, I couldn’t speak directly to customers. So I had to get creative.

I started by interviewing customer support staff—call center reps and managers who regularly fielded frustrated calls from people confused about their bills. I asked specifically about overview/dashboard-related calls, where customers couldn’t understand why they had multiple bills (billing accounts) or why those bills seemed unrelated to the policies they held. The root issue? Most people assumed one bill = one policy, when in reality, each billing account could contain multiple policies, and customers could have multiple billing accounts.

I reviewed recorded support calls, listened in on live customer service calls, and paid close attention to tone—how frustrated or confused people were, what questions they asked, and where conversations got stuck.

I also reached out to licensed insurance agents, both internal and third-party, to hear their side of it. They shared patterns around customer confusion, especially among those who always called in to pay versus those who paid online.

To build a better sense of customer expectations, I interviewed AmFam employees who were also customers, asking them how they used the overview page, what made sense, and what felt like guesswork.

Finally, I worked with our internal UX research team to gather previous findings from when the existing experience was first designed. I even tracked down the original designer, had a detailed conversation about what led to the current layout, and learned what roadblocks he ran into … so I could avoid repeating them.

“When you can’t access the info you need to make informed decisions—get scrappy. It pays off.”

What I Heard → What We Fixed

→ Design

From the outside, this looked like a layout problem. But after digging into the confusion, I reframed the work as a chance to create a micro-dashboard card that could guide every logged-in user … no matter how many policies or billing accounts they had.

On average, AmFam customers hold 2.7 insurance policies, often across multiple billing accounts. But the interface never explained how those were connected. My goal was to do more than reorganize … I needed to teach through design.

Here’s what I focused on:

Simplify → Clarify → Prioritize → Contextualize → Empower → Scale

• Remove the noise
  I eliminated duplicate elements and repetitive CTAs to reduce friction and decision fatigue. Fewer options, clearer paths.

• Improve signal vs. noise
  The old UI reused the CTA color for backgrounds and other decorative elements, making it hard to tell what was actionable. I reserved that color for true actions only … so primary CTAs stood out on first read.

• Bring key context to the top
  Important billing and policy information now lives above the fold—on both web and mobile. The redesigned layout made sure that what matters most comes first.

• Make it glanceable
  I introduced clear visual hierarchy, color-coded statuses, and at-a-glance summaries like:
  “You have three bills totaling $669.82, with $132.00 due today.”

• Show relationships, not just lists
  Each billing account now clearly shows which policies it covers … and gives you one-click access to more info. No more guessing what you're paying for, or how to find the details that matter.

• Design for scale and flexibility
  The card works as a standalone component, a full-width view, or part of a responsive multi-column layout. It scales seamlessly from desktop to mobile without losing clarity or usability.

The result is a single point of clarity—a smart, modern card that combines education, action, and context into one experience. It looks simple, but it’s doing a lot of heavy lifting for the customer.

Human-Centered Design Thinking Stew

I utilized HCD to understand the problem and Design Thinking to reframe and solve it.
That’s where I found the sweet spot.

→ Human-Centered Design

Used to uncover the problem and ground the work in real human behavior:

• Interviewed call center reps, insurance agents, and internal customers

• Reviewed live and recorded support calls to understand tone, friction, and expectations

• Focused on making customers feel informed and confident … without needing to call

→ Design Thinking

Used to reframe the assignment and prototype a better system:

• Shifted the scope from UI cleanup to a structural clarity challenge

• Created a micro-dashboard model to unify disconnected billing and policy data

• Designed around the actual journey, not the org chart