Kaiser X Labs
2017 – 2024
I spent seven years at Kaiser X Labs, the user experience company of Allianz, where I started as a Brand and Visual Designer and eventually led a team responsible for designing the next generation of claim management systems. My work revolved at the beginning around the brand of Allianz and it's products and later leading a team of UX designers around rethinking how claims were reported and processed, making the system more efficient, intuitive, and built to meet the expectations of today’s customers.
Here are a few projects that shaped Allianz and left their mark on me.
Claim Manager
When we first dove into the project, we were tackling one of the most complex interactions in the insurance industry—the claims process. It’s the one moment that defines a customer’s relationship with their insurance company, and unfortunately, it’s often a long, frustrating, and opaque experience. With claims only happening once in many years for most customers, this interaction had to work flawlessly from start to finish. For years, insurers had focused on digitizing back-office operations, but the customer-facing side often stopped at damage reporting.
Our mission was to change that. We set out to create a digital product that embraced the complexity of insurance but made it accessible, transparent, and trustworthy. Transparency wasn’t just a feature—it was a principle. If customers felt informed and supported throughout the process, the experience could transform from “something to deal with” into something reassuring.
The biggest challenge? Insurance processes vary across countries, each with its own regulations and backend systems. We needed to design a solution that was lean and modular so that each country could adapt it without breaking the core experience. On top of that, we worked with six countries, each adding their own stakeholders and requirements into the mix. Designing a modular system wasn’t just a design challenge—it was a deep dive into understanding insurance workflows, backend restrictions, and business logic.
We relied heavily on research. The insurance corporation had already conducted extensive market research and mapped user journeys, and we expanded on that by benchmarking innovations from both competitors and outside industries. From there, we redefined our goals and created three core personas that guided every decision we made.
The result was a modular software solution that merged two linear systems into one dynamic, multi-step approach. Each module was designed to work independently, allowing seamless data exchange with the backend at multiple points. This was a major breakthrough. For years, the team had been struggling to implement a “save progress” feature in the old software. Our modular design made it possible right out of the box.
On the user side, the modular system allowed different parties—customers, adjusters, and other stakeholders—to work asynchronously on the same claim. Everyone could see the claim’s progress at any given moment, creating a shared goal and improving collaboration. The UI was designed to be minimal, intuitive, and always transparent, showing users exactly where they were in the process.
Throughout this project, I relied on systematic and semantic thinking to break down and reconstruct complex insurance processes. Honest, thoughtful design helped us create something user-friendly without oversimplifying the necessary complexity. By the end, we weren’t just designing a product—we were creating an experience that made insurance feel a little less like paperwork and a little more like peace of mind.
The Claim Handling Platform
When I joined the project, the handling platform was already the backbone of the insurance corporation’s operations—handling everything from creating claims to booking providers. It was the core application for back-office teams, but its complexity and fragmented workflows were slowing users down. Our mission was clear: improve the platform with new features that made it faster and more intuitive to use.
Insurance itself is a beast of complexity, but what made this project even more challenging was working across six different countries. With each country adding its own tweaks to the software over time, we faced a web of custom patterns, workarounds, and differing requirements. The challenge wasn’t just to design something new but to untangle the existing system while making sure it worked for everyone.
We dove deep into research, benchmarking tools from other companies and testing the current workflows with real users. We analyzed usage patterns, gathered pain points, and validated our ideas through multiple rounds of quantitative studies. This helped us design with precision and confidence, knowing our decisions were rooted in real needs.
We delivered three key improvements that transformed the platform. The first was the introduction of guided flows for two critical tasks—handling payments and booking assignments. Instead of users jumping between multiple pages, we streamlined the process into a focused, step-by-step experience. This reduced navigation friction and helped users complete tasks faster before moving on to the next.
The second improvement was an enhanced activity log. The original log was designed for debugging purposes only. But through research, we discovered how valuable it could be for claim handlers. We merged debugging needs with user functionality, creating a comprehensive activity log that empowered users to track, verify, and review actions without losing context.
The third feature we added was a tree-structured navigation system. One of the biggest headaches for claim handlers was jumping between contracts, claims, and incidents. We connected everything under one roof, allowing seamless movement across levels and eliminating unnecessary backtracking.
This project sharpened my ability to think systematically and understand the intricacies of both process and technology. Designing a modular system that adapted to various requirements while staying user-friendly was key. I leaned into honest, minimal, and thoughtful design, ensuring that every interaction felt purposeful and intuitive.
By the end of the project, we had not only improved the platform but also enabled claim handlers to work faster and smarter, making a real difference in their day-to-day workflows.
Claim Network
One of the most challenging applications I designed at Allianz, was Claim Network. The application aimed to solve a significant issue for claim leads—those responsible for managing and allocating claims efficiently. At its core, Claim Network was designed to simplify the creation and management of claim processing rules without requiring technical expertise, a problem that had plagued the existing system.
The problem stemmed from how Allianz managed claims through Camunda, a rule-based system where complex logics were built to address specific scenarios. For example, if a hailstorm hit Munich, claims reported between certain dates would automatically be assigned to a specific provider or trigger cash-out payments. However, over time, Camunda became bloated with rules that were difficult to manage. Each new rule required involvement from a technical team, making it impossible for claim leads to independently create or modify processes. This reliance on technical teams introduced delays and inefficiencies.
Claim Network was our answer to this challenge, and it became a pivotal project for me due to the complexity of designing an intuitive UI that could handle such intricate workflows. The core idea was to empower claim leads to create, modify, and manage processes independently, reducing their dependency on technical teams and speeding up the response to sudden fluctuations in claims.
The most challenging aspect of the design was creating a system that provided a good overview of processes while maintaining modularity. In practice, claim leads would often duplicate existing processes—such as those created for hailstorms—each time a similar event occurred. Over time, this led to an overwhelming number of processes, making it difficult to distinguish between them. Our solution was to simplify the requirements by focusing only on what was absolutely necessary for the application to function effectively. We stripped away any features that were not essential and ensured that the core features were intuitive and easy to use.
To achieve this, we started by conducting extensive user research and benchmarking various tools to ensure we didn’t end up replicating the complexity of Camunda. One key decision was to design a card-based interface with a clear and minimal approach. When users entered the application, they could see an overview of all existing processes in a simple, scrollable card view. From there, they could easily create a new process or modify existing ones.
The process creation flow was streamlined to guide users step by step. Users could specify criteria such as location, type of damage, and other claim-specific details. Once the criteria were set, users could define the actions that needed to be triggered when the conditions were met. The bottom part of the UI was designed with modular, stackable cards representing each step of the process. The topmost card held the highest priority, and subsequent cards represented downstream actions. Users could incorporate logical operators such as “IF,” “AND,” and “OR” within these cards to add flexibility to their processes. These functions gave claim leads the power to construct complex processes without requiring technical knowledge. The modular card structure allowed them to easily visualize the logic and make changes on the fly.
The application did not boast an extensive list of features, but that was its strength. It was designed to do less, but do it exceptionally well. Every feature served a clear purpose, and users could navigate the system intuitively. This approach not only improved efficiency but also gave claim leads the flexibility they needed to respond to claim fluctuations quickly and effectively. This project remains one of the most rewarding and challenging experiences of my design career.