My Role

UX Design Director. I led a senior designer, senior writer, and a researcher from a partner team. I directed the evidence strategy, navigated the stakeholder environment, and made the call on where to push and where to hold.

 

Building the Case Before Proposing a Solution

The original field had been implemented by Co-operators' tech team based on a recommendation from an external agency. Any proposal to change it would be read as a challenge to decisions made by senior technical stakeholders. Before the team touched a wireframe, I directed them to build an evidence base: competitive research showing how other insurers were handling vehicle selection, layered with our own user research findings.

 

The framing was deliberate. Open with a design recommendation and it gets contested on opinion. Open with what users were doing and where the market had moved, and the conversation shifts to evidence.

User testing confirmed the hypothesis. The field's structure, not user error, was the problem. Competitive research showed the market had moved toward discrete, stepped selection: year, then make, then model. The direction was clear.

 

Where I Held the Line and Where I Didn't

There was some debate around model selection. Research showed users frequently couldn't identify their trim level.  Choosing between a Civic DX and a Civic LX with the correct options was confusing. I pushed to simplify to body style, just Civic, rather than requiring trim identification. The business pushed back with a legitimate constraint: insurance rates vary meaningfully by trim, and that information couldn't be deferred without downstream pricing implications.

 

We didn't win that one. What we did win was keeping trim selection within the Model step and progressively sequencing the full three-step selection so users had already committed to a year and make before facing the trim decision. This reduced abandonment risk at the highest-friction point while preserving the data the business needed.

 

Navigating the Stakeholder Environment

The tech director had personally overseen the original implementation. Product was aligned early but tech required a different approach. Framing the case around market evidence and user behaviour, rather than leading with a design recommendation, shifted the conversation away from “your implementation has problems” toward “the original design assumption has been tested and the market has moved.” That framing, combined with product's alignment, created enough internal momentum to move forward.

 

 

Outcome

The three-field sequential selection shipped in summer 2025, replacing the original combo input across Co-operators' digital auto quote flow. I transitioned out of the organization shortly after launch, before post-release metrics were available. The business case was validated through the research process, and the work established an internal model for how design and research could build a cross-functional case with technical stakeholders, with implications beyond this single initiative.