7 Days to Launch: Designing a Consumer Insurance Experience from Scratch
Background
In Q2 2025, Fairmatic explored a partnership with one of the world’s largest vehicle rental companies. As a traditionally broker-led insurance business, we had never built a consumer-facing experience for purchasing vehicle insurance—especially one designed for use on a fixed in-store iPad device mounted to the rental kiosk. This project was our first attempt—both to establish the partnership and to explore a direct-to-consumer model.
Problems
From day one, we faced significant challenges:
We had only one week before the partnership pitch—no product, no PRD.
Our existing experience was built for brokers, filled with jargon, and unfriendly to consumers.
Our mileage- and safety-based insurance model was novel, and consumers generally fear what they don’t understand.
Our org was siloed—underwriting, compliance, tech, and others had never collaborated as one team.
The product had to work seamlessly on a fixed iPad within a physical rental environment, where users had limited attention spans, time, and no access to external devices.
We didn’t have time or bandwidth to integrate standard tools like Stripe.
Our quoting process was manual; no automation existed.
Solution
Despite the tight timeline, the team worked across departments—including over weekends—and delivered a functioning experience in just one week. The product was designed specifically for an in-store iPad mounted on the rental machine. This required fast, touch-optimized interactions with minimal cognitive load, since users would engage with it during vehicle pickup. Key highlights:
- Rewritten, consumer-friendly copy throughout the flow, with helper text used where legal/compliance restrictions applied.
- Fully automated quoting experience with minimal required input.
- Informational banners to explain mileage- and safety-based insurance.
- Designed the flow for a kiosk-like iPad experience with large tap targets, progressive disclosure, and guided interactions.
- In-house solutions for third-party tools like Stripe billing and Experian Captcha.
This experience is best viewed on an iPad.
Impact
The pitch was a success. We secured a $100M proposal and unlocked new expansion opportunities into Mexico, New Zealand, and Canada.
How Design Added Value
- Partnered with stakeholders to define the minimum required data for quoting.
- Established a consumer-friendly tone of voice and simplified language.
- Improved existing UX gaps—such as how quotes are displayed.
- Aligned cross-functional teams on a shared vision.
- Designed for a physical context—ensured accessibility, readability, and fast comprehension in a kiosk-based iPad interface.
- Ran internal testing and gathered feedback from synthetic users and userinterviews.com due to lack of time for real-user testing.
My Role
Due to NDA, contact me at adithkvn@gmail.com for specifics.
Broadly, I:
- Identified the minimum data needed to generate a quote.
- Established the information architecture tailored for a kiosk-based iPad flow, ensuring a smooth experience even under time-pressured, walk-up usage scenarios.
- Redesigned the quote output screen.
- Facilitated daily 3-hour cross-functional scrums to align and iterate.
- Led testing on the final day to validate the experience.
Learnings
- Constant, direct collaboration is the fastest and most effective way to deliver high-quality outcomes.
- A short timeline doesn’t limit impact—smart prioritization and focus can lead to powerful results.
- Designing for physical contexts (in-store kiosks) requires anticipating environment constraints—like lighting, attention span, and ergonomics.
THE END
