Animal friends
Collaborative Design Excellence: Transforming Digital Experiences at Animal Friends
achievements
Migrated and redesigned the platform from WordPress to Optimizely CMS
Reimagined quote engine for a customer-first, mobile-first experience
Enhanced customer portal functionality for improved efficiencies
Implemented modern design processes, including collaborative systems, whiteboarding, and ideation sessions
A LITTLE ABOUT ANIMAL FRIENDS
Animal Friends is the leading UK pet insurer dedicated to making a difference. As an award-winning enterprise, they’ve become a top pet insurance provider in the UK, caring for over 1 million pets with comprehensive coverage for cats, dogs, and horses.
With a team of around 500 committed colleagues, AFI is on a mission to improve the lives of all animals, believing that every creature deserves protection and a happy, healthy life.
I was thrilled when Animal Friends offered me the role of Head of Product Design, combining my passions for animal welfare and product design, making the decision to join an easy one.
MY ROLE AT ANIMAL FRIENDS
As Head of Product Design at Animal Friends, I was entrusted with leading the transformation of our digital experiences. My role encompassed overseeing the comprehensive redesign and migration of our website, enhancing our quote engine, and implementing a collaborative design system to streamline workflows across the company.
THE REDESIGN & MIGRATION OF THE WEBSITE
At AFI (Animal Friends International), we underwent a comprehensive website redesign. This involved migrating from WordPress, a legacy platform burdened with significant technical debt, to Optimizely CMS (formerly known as Episerver), coupled with a complete redesign.
Given our tight timelines leading up to the peak period, we had to adopt an extremely tactical and agile approach in breaking down features to ensure the timely delivery of the project.
To develop a best-in-class product that caters to both external and internal users, our website CMS was designed to meet a variety of needs.
Internally, it allowed our team to deliver content to customers independently, eliminating the reliance on other departments such as development resources. Additionally, it enables internal users to set up A/B tests to optimise the performance of on-brand traffic.
The project aimed to convert organic traffic so there was less reliance on meta partners.
“The new website has enabled us to move faster and requires less technical capacity for day-to-day changes. We eliminated a significant amount of technical debt from our legacy platform while also improving our SEO efforts. After delivering this project, the design team remained the owners of the website; all changes were raised and triaged by the team.”
THE REDESIGN OF THE QUOTE ENGINE
In our pursuit of excellence in digital services, we embarked on a transformative journey to revamp our quote engine (QE), a critical component of our website facilitating insurance policy selection.
We aimed to enhance user experience and pioneer a mobile-first approach, aligning with evolving consumer preferences. This case study delves into our collaborative efforts, methodologies employed, and the outcomes achieved.
“Through multiple rounds of usability testing, we identified user hurdles in our legacy platform. By designing the new platform with a mobile-first approach and addressing the specific demands and needs of our customers, we successfully enhanced the overall user experience.”
Pawsome Palette
In managing a diverse team using varied software and local file storage, streamlining our design process became paramount. Previously, we relied on wireframes, handing them over to UI designers to transition into high-fidelity designs. This approach was time-consuming and fragmented our workflow.
Introducing a design system transformed our approach. We transitioned seamlessly from mid-fidelity wireframes to high-fidelity designs, eliminating unnecessary steps and accelerating our design-to-development process. With all assets stored on the cloud, collaboration became real-time, allowing us to iterate and refine ideas efficiently.
Despite having a compact team with limited capacity, the design system enabled other departments to contribute and build upon our foundational designs. This collaborative approach amplified productivity company-wide, empowering teams to implement changes swiftly and effectively.
Creating a design system provided us with a single source of truth, streamlining our workflow significantly. This approach enabled the team to work more efficiently by minimising touchpoints with other departments and reducing the frequency of project revisions.
View design systemCreating a design system provided us with a single source of truth, streamlining our workflow significantly. This approach enabled the team to work more efficiently by minimising touchpoints with other departments and reducing the frequency of project revisions.
