Putty
on-demand insurance by The Hartford
As a founding member of The Hartford Innovation Lab, I played a key role in bringing human-centered design to product development for the Fortune 500 company, working on a team of six people. Founded in 2018, the Lab aimed to innovate through user-focused approaches, and its first product, Putty, offered handymen the option of buying insurance for short projects as an alternative to traditional yearly coverage. My responsibilities spanned the entire product lifecycle, from ideation to front-end prototyping.
- UX & UI
- design system
- research
- NLP
Final UI
I led the visual design and hand off efforts. My deliverables included prototyped interactions (Greensock, CSS, After Effects), wireframes, site maps, and accessibility reviews.
Med-Fi screens
I led four medium fidelity sprints for Putty. Medium fidelity prototypes were used to assess the information architecture, user flow, and basic functionality at a lower level of design effort.
Design system
One of my primary responsibilities was to evolve the design system to meet changing business needs. Within a year, Putty grew from a splash site to a direct-to-consumer web app.
Marketing content
Leveraging my skills in digital fabrication, I created a physical Putty logo using a laser cutter. Working with a lab mate, I composed a series of vignettes featuring the logo for Putty’s launch.
NLP prototypes
Using IBM Watson, I created several Natural Language Processing (NLP) prototypes that paired underwriting factors with a chat flow. I did this by training a model on hundreds of user utterances. By triggering webhooks I was able to adapt to the conversation flow in real time. My approach was fast (completed in less than a week) and gave us the option of testing quickly.
Discovery phase
My contribution to the early stage design efforts included leading interviews, synthesizing findings, and generating drawings to be used as conversation starters as well as in low-fidelity exercises.
