Designing clarity into complexity: A mobile insurance upload experience

Project overview

  • My role: Lead Designer (User research, Interaction + UI Design, User Testing)
  • Platform: Native Mobile (iOS & Android)
  • Team: Product manager, Software Developers, QA
  • Tools Used: Figma, Maze
illustration of upload

Introduction

Uploading proof of renters insurance is a critical step for lease compliance, but the experience is often confusing, error-prone, and requires manual review. I led the redesign of the insurance upload experience to simplify a complex, data-heavy workflow into a fast, intuitive process that provides instant feedback and improves submission success. This work resulted in a 15% increase in valid submissions and reduced friction for both residents and property managers.

The problem

Users were submitting insurance documents that often failed validation due to unclear requirements and delayed feedback. When a submission was invalid, users weren’t given enough information to understand what went wrong or how to fix it, leading to repeated uploads, confusion, and increased support from property managers.



Designing for Two Audiences

Although this feature was surfaced in the resident-facing app, property managers were an equally important user group. After a resident uploaded their policy, the property manager would review the scanned results and use them to track insurance coverage across their portfolio. This meant that every screen and every piece of language had to be consistent, accurate, and aligned across both user experiences.

We collaborated closely with internal teams to map out not just the resident journey, but the behind-the-scenes workflows of property managers who needed to act on the data. Our design needed to ensure that statuses were up-to-date and clearly communicated across systems. If a policy was invalid, both parties needed to understand why and how to fix it.

Improving Resident Understanding

A key driver of invalid submissions was lack of clarity around what qualified as a valid policy. Instead of relying on post-submission errors, I introduced guidance before the upload step to increase first-time success. I designed an instruction step that clearly outlined required fields (policy number, coverage limits, dates) using plain language and visual examples. This shifted the experience from reactive error handling to proactive guidance. To support real-world behavior, the flow accommodates multiple input methods, including file upload and camera capture, ensuring users could easily provide documentation regardless of format.

Designing for System Constraints

The upload experience depended on an asynchronous scanning system, where validation results could return immediately or be delayed. I worked closely with engineering to define clear system states and design appropriate feedback for each scenario:

  • Immediate validation → real-time results surfaced instantly
  • Delayed processing → fallback state with clear expectations and next steps
  • Failed or incomplete results → actionable feedback to guide resubmission
This required designing for uncertainty while maintaining user trust. By making system status visible and predictable, users could understand what was happening and what to do next without relying on external support.

Results & Reflections

The redesigned upload flow led to a measurable 17% increase in valid submissions and a noticeable decrease in manual outreach required by property managers. Residents felt more supported and informed, and PMs appreciated the clarity and consistency of results shown in their portal. Perhaps most importantly, the system built trust: both users had access to the same transparent status updates, with clear next steps when something went wrong.

This project reinforced the importance of designing for both ends of a workflow and the value of embedding education directly into key moments of action. It also served as a foundational step toward more advanced features like real-time validation and coverage tracking, both of which were made easier by the structure and clarity we introduced here.

Impact

This work extended beyond improving a single interaction — it established a foundation for how insurance workflows are communicated across the product.

  • Standardized system states for policy validation, enabling consistent messaging across onboarding, tenant portal, and property manager tools
  • Reduced operational burden by minimizing manual review and follow-up workflows
  • Improved cross-user transparency, ensuring both residents and property managers had access to the same status and next steps
  • Enabled future features, including real-time validation and coverage tracking, by introducing a clearer system structure
This project reinforced the importance of designing not just for a single user action, but for the entire system of interactions that follow.

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