Rather than mapping the experience in isolation, we co-created journey maps and ecosystem diagrams with participants in real time. This “scrappy” method gave us immediate, first-person insight into how they navigated each step and revealed the broader role vehicles play in their daily routines. It allowed participants to define what mattered most according to their own perspective and logic. This highlighted how the impact of an accident extends far beyond the incident itself.
Before the interviews, we also ran hypothesis-building sessions with internal stakeholders. These sessions surfaced existing assumptions that were often rooted in operational thinking rather than customer experience. They also opened space for a deeper and more empathetic understanding of how accidents affect people emotionally.
Finding the common thread
To understand the emotional and practical realities of having a car accident, we conducted in-depth research with 10 personal auto customers. Through one-on-one interviews, we explored their end-to-end journey, from the moment of impact to regaining a sense of normalcy. Along the way, we uncovered key stages, pain points, and emotional highs and lows.
To make sense of what we heard, I consolidated all 10 customer journey maps into a single spreadsheet, aligning each participant’s experience step by step. This helped identify consistent patterns in both actions and emotional responses and laid the foundation for a unified experience map.
The map became a powerful storytelling tool. It gave structure to our conversations with stakeholders by spotlighting moments of confusion, stress, and vulnerability. More importantly, it revealed how deeply accidents can disrupt people’s lives, far beyond just filing a claim.
By surfacing a clear picture of customers’ lived experiences, emotions, and expectations, we laid the groundwork for imagining a more connected, supportive future.
For many stakeholders, the emotional weight of the findings was unexpected and eye-opening, prompting a shift in how they saw their customers and their own role in supporting them. This work continues to help keep the customer’s story front and centre in the minds of Erie Insurance Group’s employees.
To help us paint a picture of the improved customer experience, we created a future-state experience map. Mapped across key phases and touchpoints, it brought together our 12 refined solutions into a single, end-to-end vision, aligning the company’s strategic objectives with customer needs.
The map helped us:
- Show how each concept contributes to the overall journey
- Highlight the gaps between current and future states
- Clarify the functional and emotional needs the insurer must support
Orchestrating the experience
We co-created the evolution map in collaborative workshops, using it to turn the future-state blueprint into a phased and realistic delivery plan.
We identified and extracted the key capabilities needed to bring the blueprint to life across three areas: technical infrastructure (e.g., APIs, data capture), user-facing features (e.g., proactive updates, personalisation), and internal enablers (e.g., governance, workflows).
Mapping these across near-, mid-, and longer-term horizons allowed us to:
- Prioritise foundational enablers
- Sequence capabilities based on dependencies
- Balance ambition with feasibility
- Ground the vision in operational and organizational reality
- Align teams on what to build first, what can be deferred, and where to build momentum
This was never a static roadmap. Instead, the evolution map served as a flexible thinking tool, designed to support ongoing reprioritisation as we learn more through delivery, invite input, and adapt based on new insights as delivery progressed.
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I co-led an ideation workshop with the project team, grounding it in journey maps to spark ideas across a cross-functional group. We broke into smaller teams, each focusing on a specific portion of the current-state journey. Step by step, we surfaced opportunities and imagined what a more supportive experience could look like. We prioritised 16 of the most promising ideas and developed them into early-stage concepts to explore further.
To gather honest feedback before diving into detailed design, we created storyboards to test multiple solutions in realistic, end-to-end scenarios. Using the storyboards, we guided 10 customers through possible future experiences and listened closely to their reactions. Just like in our initial research, we used Miro to capture feedback in real time, which made it easy to see what resonated and what didn’t.
After the sessions, we consolidated all feedback into a spreadsheet to identify common themes and patterns in customers’ feedback. During concept testing, customers scored each idea based on how valuable and impactful it would be to them. This helped us prioritise what mattered most to them, and narrowed the original 16 down to 12 refined solutions. These informed the future-state journey and service blueprint, grounding Erie’s vision in real customer priorities.
Defining what a "great" experience looks like
Low-fidelity testing for high-impact learning
Turning vision into reality means knowing exactly what it takes: the skills, processes, and resources that must come together across teams and systems. This phase used the service blueprint to pinpoint those essential capabilities, while the evolution map laid out a phased path from foundational capabilities through to a fully personalised, seamless multi-channel experience. By aligning ambition with practical steps, we set the stage for delivering not just an inspiring future but one that is achievable and scalable.
Scoring the service
We co-created the service blueprint with teams from operations, tech, frontline, and more. It gave the insurer a clear view of what it would take to deliver the future journey: end to end, front to back, and across channels.
The blueprint mapped the people, processes, systems, and business capabilities needed to support the experience, providing teams a shared view of the operational shifts required to bring the future state to life.
Built in Miro, it became a living document designed to evolve with the organisation’s priorities, capabilities, and customer expectations.
It enabled the business to:
- Align on delivery
- Identify gaps and dependencies early
- Phase implementation realistically
By grounding the vision in operational detail, the blueprint gave the business both direction and momentum.
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Working backwards from the vision
We used Moments that Matter to spotlight the most important points in the journey, the ones where the insurer could make the biggest difference to customers. These moments showed where even small changes could have a big impact.
They helped the client:
- Understand where to focus time and effort
- Balance efficient delivery with a more human experience
- Prioritise improvements that truly matter to people
By calling them out, we made customers’ needs more visible and easier to act on, helping the business design with more clarity, care, and intention.
Shaping the experience vision
* One of 12 service ideas developed during capability mapping. I’ve spotlighted this example to show the depth of thinking without the clutter of a full map. In the complete version, ideas are connected to reflect how capabilities evolve together. This connection is not shown here for clarity.
