At MassMutual, the third-largest life insurer in the U.S., all policy changes relied on paper-based forms. Customers had to locate the correct form online, print it, sign it, and mail it back to the company. Employees then reviewed the forms for errors and manually entered the data into the system. This outdated system led to growing customer frustration and rising operational costs.
To modernize this inefficient process, I was hired as the sole designer on a specialized six-person team tasked with developing a digital solution to eliminate the need for paper forms. My work focused on a series of high-impact requests, including the Policy Ownership Change.
The Policy Ownership Change request allows policyholders to transfer their policy rights to another person or entity. This process often arises during major life events, such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, or business succession.
I initially assumed the request form would be similar to others I had worked on. However, I soon realized it was the most challenging request form due to the numerous scenarios involving complex family structures, varying estate sizes and tax implication. If completed incorrectly, the form could lead to significant tax penalties for customers, sometimes reaching thousands of dollars.
Legacy Design: By combining ownership change and beneficiary change requests into one form, the original design left customers confused about which questions applied to them. The form’s unconventional structure required users to jump between sections, and its lack of guidance resulted in frequent customer support calls. In total, 433 hours per year were spent on support and correcting errors.
Customer Interviews: Feedback from 24 participants, along with internal data, revealed common complaints such as the inconvenience of mailing forms, unclear instructions, complicated financial terms, and the lengthy time required to complete the form. Customers reported spending an average of 103 minutes to complete and mail the form.
Employee Interviews: MassMutual’s data entry and customer support teams estimated that the Ownership Change Request form was costing $7,800 annually in customer support calls, $9,000 in corrections, and $116,500 in manual data entry for mailed-in forms.
User Flow: While most user flows were straightforward, complex situations, such as those involving large families and intricate estates, had the potential to fall into legal limbo. Collaborating with the Business Analyst, we identified and addressed every possible legal gray area scenario. The user flow was the most challenging part of the entire project and took almost three months to complete.
Hypotheses: With over a decade of experience as a UX designer, I was confident that applying proven UX techniques, honed through years of working with digital forms, would deliver outcomes far beyond the capabilities of paper forms. Instead my main priority was to ensure that confusing or complex questions were clarified and that any potential legal gray areas were accounted for in the user flow.
Product Strategy: My top priority is to hand off design work to developers as quickly as possible. To achieve this, I focus on features with the highest impact, lowest effort, and proven solutions. These quick wins showcase the value of design to stakeholders. In the second phase, having gained a productivity lead over development, I can focus on more complex features that require additional time and effort. In the third phase, while the first two phases are in development, I conduct user testing, refine visual design, and work on features that are simple to implement but may take longer to align with business needs, such as text refinement or copywriting.
Success Criteria: Upon completing my research, I defined key measurable objectives that I planned to achieve through my design work. Securing sign-off from stakeholders, business analysts, UX researchers, and other project team members was essential to ensure alignment on our goals.
With more than a decade of experience designing UX forms, I applied five proven solutions to achieve the highest impact. I prioritized the process by addressing low-effort, high-effort, and finally the “long-effort” solutions.
Challenge: The legacy form took customers an average of 103 minutes to complete. By pre-filling the new digital form with existing data, the process would become faster and make it less overwhelming. It took participants an average of 4 minutes to fill out basic fields (name, address, phone number, and email) and 30 minutes to complete the remaining sections of the form. Only 7 of the 24 participants preferred the existing process of manually entering this information, while the rest would like to see it changed.
Solution: The approach taken was to omit questions asking for basic information already on file would be omitted, but users could update this information on the review page if corrections are required.
Impact: 46 minutes saved: The average saved by users by not filling out basic information from 15 minutes to 11 minutes. 185% increase. 20 of 24 participants preferred skipping questions where the answer was already on file.
Challenge: The legacy form made it difficult for customers to understand the continuation of ownership (who inherits ownership after the original owner’s death). My assumption that presenting this information in a clearer way—only achievable through a digital solution—could significantly reduce confusion. With over 27 different variations of possible inheritance orders, none of the 24 participants could easy keeping track of the inherits order with multiple family members. While 12 of 24 participants could fully understand the definitions of roles such as contingent owner and beneficiaries.
Solution: The approach taken was to show both the role with the name of the person that role was attributed with. This would appear whatever a new person could be added to the inheritance order and on the final review page for customers to approve before submitting the form.
Impact: 100% of people. 24 of 24 participants preferred the feature of having a persons name and their role side by side.
Challenge: Since the legacy form was paper-based, customers encountered a list of irrelevant questions, making it unclear which ones they needed to complete. I believed that a digital solution that shows only the questions specific to their situation would greatly reduce this confusion. Research indicated that only 8 of 24 participants were entirely confident about which questions to answer.
Solution: As customers answered, only the relevant follow-up questions pertaining to their situation would be shown. They wouldn’t see or know about other questions that didn’t apply to them.
Impact: 175% increase. 22 of 24 participants preferred the new approach of seeing questions that were only irrelevant to them.
Challenge: With the legacy form being paper-based, all questions were presented at once. In my experience, showing all the questions at once can feel overwhelming and stressful for the customer. I user tested three ways of presenting questions to customers: all at once, one at a time, and grouped together. Additionally, I tested a solution both with and without a progress bar.
Solution: User testing revealed that the best approach was to bundle similar questions into manageable groups. To achieve this, some questions needed to be rearranged from their original sections to improve the overall flow. The progress bar was eliminated because the number of questions varied across user flows.
Impact: 75% of people. 18 of 24 participants preferred “grouped” questions instead of “all at once” or “one at a time.”Impact: 500% increase. 18 of 24 participants understood all of the questions being asked.
Challenge: The legacy form included financial terminology that was often difficult for customers to understand. While it’s widely believed that such language is necessary for ‘legal’ reasons, my experience has shown that isn’t always true. Simplifying these terms and rewriting certain questions could significantly improve the process for customers. From the initial research, only 3 of the 24 participants understood financial terms like “right of survivorship” and “tenants in common.
Solution: I collaborated with the Business Analyst to rewrite certain questions and added additional text or tooltips to the ones I couldn’t change. I consider this a “long-term” solution, as it was difficult to get approval but easy to implement. This approach made the process clearer for customers while still meeting business requirements.
Impact: 500% increase. 18 of 24 participants understood all of the questions being asked.
