The Institutes: Continuing Education for CPCUs

Goal: Design and Launch a Continuing Education Program

  • My Role: UX Lead (Consultant)

  • My Team: Information architect and visual designer

  • Customer Problem: Launch a continuing education program for the first time in 70 years

  • Successful Result: The MVP site launched successfully with positive feedback from The Institutes’ customers. We handed off designs and plans to the client for future iterations.

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In 2015, The Institutes decided to launch a Continuing Education (CE) program for their Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) designation. CPCUs, like actuaries and CPAs, have to pass a series of difficult exams to earn the designation. This was the first time in 70 years that they would have to complete a CE requirement.

My team was hired to design and build a responsive Reporting Tool application, used to track CE credits and manage student accounts. I led the user experience track of work, managing a visual designer and an information architect and performing hands-on tasks as needed.

Challenges

  • Requirements needed extensive development

  • No policies in place to support the new program

  • No product owner, but rather a series of rotating stakeholders who attended working sessions a few hours each week, in addition to other responsibilities

  • Their in-house IT department opted to take over development of the applications but could not build many of the interfaces we had designed and tested, requiring extensive design changes

  • Fairly restrictive design constraints from The Institutes' Marketing team

  • Scope Creep: Midway through the project, a key stakeholder asked us to complete design and requirements for an online catalog to help CPCUs earn CE credit, to launch at the same time as the Reporting Tool

Process

  • Created screen flow diagrams to review requirements gaps with stakeholders

  • Established a series of weekly working sessions with stakeholders to review designs and requirements

  • Established a cadence of technical reviews prior to stakeholder review

  • Validated all designs in a series of usability tests, leading to significant changes in design and requirements

  • Worked with stakeholders to create a product roadmap, trimming scope to create a Minimum Viable Product for the first release

“I want to compliment you on your patience during all these meetings…I think I would have thrown up my hands and said “Can you guys call me when you finally make up your minds?” or “Sorry. No. We decided this two weeks ago. Next!” But you don’t. I know it comes with your job, but you do it well. You are patient and listen and are more polite than most people would ever be. You push back in places where we have made decisions (or thought we had) and now want to change it or where you disagree, but you do so in an understanding tone of voice. I admire you for that. Just want to say great job.”
— Institutes Client

Results

Release 1.0 of the Reporting Tool and Knowledge Center launched successfully in November 2016 and The Institutes’ customers are quite happy with the tool.

Designs for the Reporting Tool application contain different views depending on user role. Most screens are fully responsive with breakpoints for desktop, tablet and mobile. After launch, we continued the designs and requirements for post-Release 1.0 functionality to be built at a future date and worked with CE for CPCUs’ new product owner to define the future road map.