From Insights to Impact: Scaling Claimsforce’s Product with Strategic UX
Transforming a fast-moving startup’s approach to research, product focus, and team collaboration – while building the foundations for long-term growth.
Context & Challenge
This InsurTech startup based in Hamburg, set out to modernize how property and casualty claims are handled by insurers. With new funding and a growing team, they were preparing to launch their Version 2.0 — a scalable SaaS product enabling automated, configurable assignment of claims experts.
The ambition was clear, but the fast-paced growth had created gaps in research depth, product focus, and internal alignment. The team was highly responsive to user input — sometimes too much so — often adapting based on individual feedback rather than validated insights or scalable need patterns.
My Role
As leading Experience Designer, I worked across strategy, research operations, product shaping, and team enablement. My main focus areas were:
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Transforming the way user insights were gathered and applied
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Designing cross-functional ways of working that supported sustainable scale
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Upskilling internal roles in research and user collaboration
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Creating structures the team could continue using after our departure
Describe your image.
Describe your image.
Making Research Strategic, Not Just Reactive
When we joined, Claimsforce had a culture of quick reaction to user input — which was admirable, but lacked long-term strategic alignment. Feedback loops were immediate, but didn’t always consider whether a request was:
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Representing a broader user need
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Technically viable across insurers
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Aligned with business priorities
We shifted the approach by:
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Establishing a lean research ops system with regular insight reviews
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Introducing a lightweight experimentation framework to test assumptions
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Facilitating discussions that translated feedback into user problems, not just feature asks
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Mapping multi-user needs to support platform-wide decisions, not just one-off fixes
Capability Building: Leaving Something Behind
A key part of my approach was enabling the team to continue strong user collaboration after our engagement ended. This included:
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Upskilling the internal UX and PM team on interviewing techniques, research synthesis, and stakeholder facilitation
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Co-creating a user collaboration strategy: how to plan, structure, and share research to support strategic work
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Helping the wider team — especially developers and leadership — connect with user goals, through shared rituals, walkthroughs, and insight mapping
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Setting up templates and processes for research planning, discussion guides, and usability testing
My goal was not just to help ship the right MVP — but to set up the people and processes needed to scale design thinking sustainably within Claimsforce.
First sketches and Iteration
First sketches and Iteration
Design & Delivery Process
1. Discovery
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Co-ran workshops to clarify product vision, risks, and goals
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Conducted user interviews to uncover workflow gaps and needs
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Defined cross-team alignment around user types and core scenarios
2. Research Integration
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Built a lean research practice that included PMs and UXers
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Defined how insights would be gathered, prioritized, and actioned
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Facilitated regular insight reviews that shaped roadmap decisions
3. Prototyping & Testing
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Created prototypes for Disposition 2.0 to test cross-insurer scenarios
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Ran user walkthroughs to validate concepts and uncover friction points
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Iterated on feature design with input from product and engineering
4. Team Enablement & Handover
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Introduced agile rituals with a user-centered twist (e.g. story kickoffs with user context)
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Held paired sessions with internal UX to build confidence and autonomy
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Built handover materials, including a research playbook and stakeholder map
Outcome & Reflection
Outcomes
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Disposition 2.0 MVP launched in 3 months
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Team matured in insight gathering and sharing, shifting from reactive to intentional
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Internal PMs and UX designers empowered to run research & influence strategy
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User collaboration became embedded in product conversations
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Early adoption success: MVP used by one client, with interest from 3 more insurers
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A clearer, aligned vision for future product iterations and scale
Reflection
This project reminded me that sustainable impact comes not just from what we deliver — but from what we leave behind.
Building great products is about empowering great teams. Helping Claimsforce shift their culture around research and user understanding was as meaningful to me as shipping the MVP itself. It’s a model I continue to bring into every team: embed insight, foster autonomy, and build things that grow even after you leave.