Iterations & Problem-Solving: Enhancing Multi-Office Navigation

The Problem :Why State Farm’s Agent Sites Needed a Usability Overhaul

State Farm’s fragmented digital ecosystem created inefficiencies, requiring agents to navigate multiple disconnected tools, leading to redundant data entry and poor search engine optimization. To address this, Dialexa was brought in to develop a simplified, integrated system that could support the growing number of multi-office agents.

My Contributions:

• Conducted primary & secondary research and competitive analysis
• Co-facilitated a 2-day Enterprise Design Thinking Workshop
• Designed and prototyped a future-state Agent Site experience & multi-office editor portal

The Challenge: Fragmented Agent Site Experience

State Farm agents struggled with inefficient workflows and limited customization options, making it difficult to manage their online presence effectively. A unified platform was needed to streamline workflows, enhance branding flexibility, and improve overall efficiency.

Key Challenges:

• Redundant Workflows – Agents manually re-entered the same information across multiple locations.
• Fragmented Experience – Multi-office agents lacked a centralized tool, causing inconsistencies.
• Limited Customization – Agents wanted more control while maintaining State Farm’s brand identity.

To ensure our solution met user needs, we identified three key personas:

• State Farm Agents – Needed a more efficient way to update and manage their sites.
• Multi-Office Agents – Required a streamlined process for maintaining multiple locations.
• Prospective Customers – Prioritized clear communication and seamless service access.

These insights shaped our design approach, ensuring the final solution directly addressed real user pain points while enhancing the agent and customer experience.

The Approach and My Contributions:

As a Product Designer, I played a key role in translating research insights into actionable design solutions that simplified content management and improved usability. Our process was informed by extensive research, including 28 stakeholder and agent interviews, competitive benchmarking of 9 competitors, and secondary research. I co-facilitated a 2-day Enterprise Design Thinking Workshop with 20 stakeholders, leading to a future-state journey map that identified prioritized features.

Key Contributions:

• Facilitating a Two-Day Enterprise Workshop – Co-led design thinking sessions with 20+ stakeholders to align on pain points and define solutions.
• Synthesizing Research Findings – Conducted 28 interviews, benchmarked 9 competitors, and reviewed secondary research.
• Designing a Multi-Office Editor Dashboard – Led the design of a centralized tool that streamlined content management.
• Wireframing & Prototyping – Developed UI components and high-fidelity prototypes to validate usability improvements.

Bridging Research Insights with Scalable UX Solutions

We conducted workshops in Chicago to meet directly with State Farm stakeholders and understand the customer journey from agent search to quote retrieval. The workshops included persona validation, empathy mapping, as-is scenarios, big idea prioritization, and storyboarding. The outcomes provided clear design direction, prioritizing agent needs such as improved customization, streamlined content management, and efficient multi-office navigation.

Key Outcomes from the Workshop:

• Enhanced customer engagement features for agent sites
• Clear journey mapping that guided design decisions
• Prioritized features like multi-office navigation and AI tools
• Agent productivity improvements through streamlined workflows

After workshop synthesis and stakeholder feedback, we identified key pain points in how agents managed multiple locations. The fragmented system required excessive manual effort, with agents switching between separate site versions and struggling to maintain consistency. The outcome of our workshops led to a future-state journey map, outlining prioritized features to streamline workflows and enhance engagement.

How We Refined the Multi-Office Editor:

1. Before:
   • Agents had to manually toggle between separate site versions, making updates time-consuming.
   • No clear way to synchronize content across locations, leading to inconsistencies.
   • Users struggled to locate key features, reducing adoption and usability.
2. After:
   • Designed a centralized multi-office editor, allowing agents to update all locations from a single interface.
   • Introduced a quick-switch toggle, reducing task completion time and improving efficiency.
   • Enhanced navigation and layout clarity, ensuring seamless interaction with core features.

The Impact: Driving Efficiency, Adoption, and Satisfaction

The impact of our work on the State Farm agent platform was significant. By combining user research, collaborative workshops, and thoughtful design, we delivered solutions that directly addressed agent pain points. This led to more efficient workflows, higher user satisfaction, and improved adoption rates.

• Improved Adoption & Satisfaction: Agents praised the redesign for its clarity, ease of use, and improved presentation.
• Higher Usability Ratings: The prototype outperformed the live site in user testing, achieving a 91% effectiveness rating vs. the existing site’s 88%. Additionally, this was achieved through iterative design informed by workshop insights, research findings, and agent feedback, making the final prototype more intuitive and aligned with agent needs.
• Streamlined Content Management: The centralized multi-office editor significantly reduced redundant workflows.

Final Outcome:

This project transformed the agent website experience by streamlining workflows, improving usability, and increasing adoption—ensuring a scalable, user-friendly solution that aligns with State Farm’s long-term digital strategy.

“Vanessa’s visual design skills are next-level and enabled stunning deliverables for our clients. Her interactive service blueprint was a game-changer, making insights easily navigable and engaging for stakeholders. She proactively built a design system and client-branded templates that saved us countless hours, ensuring consistency across every presentation. We could not have delivered the high-quality, brand-compliant materials we did without her talent and diligence.”

-Senior Designer