Smart Renewals

Reducing Manual Effort and Building AI Trust


Org: ThreeFlow

Role: Product Design Lead

Timeline: 6 months (2024)

Platform: Web

Tools: Figma, Loom, Sheets, Miro, Jira

Collaborators: Product, Engineering, AI, QA, Product Marketing, Sales, Support, Biz Ops

ThreeFlow is a benefits placement platform connecting carriers and brokers in one collaborative system

The first AI-powered renewal experience in the benefits placement industry

The Challenge

Carriers were churning from the platform due to:

  • Manual effort bottlenecks in legacy renewal workflows

  • Tech debt and fragmented UI blocking usability and feature velocity

  • Limited organizational maturity to support complex AI-driven systems

What started as a UX issue quickly revealed itself as a deeper systems and trust problem.

The Opportunity

Design an AI-augmented experience that would:

  • Automate low-value work while keeping users in control

  • Earn trust through progressive transparency

  • Operate on a simplified, scalable interaction model

  • Drive maturity in how the org ships and supports AI-powered features

My Role

  • Led end-to-end UX: research, IA, design strategy, prototyping, and delivery

  • Created the AI interaction framework still in use across the platform

  • Brought teams into alignment using storyboards, vision videos, and async rituals

  • Co-led post-launch work on design systems and UX QA

Discovery & Research

To uncover root issues, I combined fresh fieldwork with historical insights:

  • Interviewed carrier users, underwriters, and support teams to map day-to-day struggles, trust breakdowns, and decision bottlenecks

  • Reviewed 3+ months of product research, including user feedback logs, internal studies, and usage audits

  • Synthesized findings across teams and timelines to create a clear foundation for design

Thematic insights revealed:

  • Lack of clarity around how and when data moved through the workflow

  • Overloaded interfaces that overwhelmed users before they understood the task

  • Inefficient manual handoffs and duplicated effort that introduced errors and slowed delivery

“I would love help with quoting but I would still want to review before submitting my quote”

“Our internal system generates the proposal based on a schedule and then I come to ThreeFlow I basically have to do the same thing but manually”

These patterns revealed a gap where ThreeFlow could leverage AI to improve the carrier workflow — unlocking a new opportunity to reduce effort, boost clarity, and modernize operations for the first time in this space

Storytelling the Future State

To align the cross-functional team, I created a narrated Loom walkthrough showing the ideal experience from a carrier’s perspective — emphasizing clarity, AI transparency, and workflow ownership.

Play the embedded Loom to experience the narrative shared with PMs, AI leads, and sales.

Storyboarding isn’t an output for me — it’s a key alignment method.

Design Strategy

Built a Phased AI Transparency Framework to govern trust-building interactions:

Phase One Surface Confidence + Status:

Shows what the AI knows, and how sure it is

Phase Two Enable Control + Clarity:

Shows what the AI knows, and how sure it is

These principles guided both UI language and feature pacing throughout the release.

Design Iterations & Tradeoffs

Designing Smart Renewals meant navigating critical tradeoffs between automation and control, clarity and complexity.

I explored multiple approaches, including:

Exploration one - leveraging the current UI with new AI experience

Exploration two - enhancing the design based on user feedback requesting project management support and AI assistance to improve workflow clarity

Exploration three - Simplifying the workflow and UI structure to make the AI feel approachable and low-friction

Each iteration was evaluated for:

  • Alignment with trust principles

  • Reduction in cognitive load

  • Real-world feasibility with our AI + engineering stack

Engineering partners also weighed in on complexity and tradeoffs given timeline and tech constraints.

Feasibility won out, and we settled on a design that felt simple, intelligent, and approachable — especially important for risk-averse users in the insurance field.

Delivery & Testing

  • Ran the company’s first formal beta program

  • Delivered prototypes, embedded QA specs, and held async validation loops

  • Facilitated team alignment through vision walkthroughs and structured feedback rituals

Shipped Experience

The final experience reflects:

  • Simpler UI scaffolding

  • Inline trust cues

  • Flexible workflow logic for varied carrier needs

The Results

Quantitative

  • 65% reduction in manual effort

  • $200M+ in renewal premiums processed

  • 92% compliance with ease-of-use criteria

Qualitative

  • Increased platform trust and adoption

  • Reusable UX patterns for future AI features

  • Stronger sales and support team enablement

Business Value

  • Reduced operational costs for carriers

  • Improved marketplace liquidity through increased participation

  • Generated $200M+ in recurring revenue since launch (June 2024)

Ripple Effect

Smart Renewals helped ThreeFlow become the first company to bring AI into the benefits placement space — and set new expectations for how intelligent systems should behave.

But more than a successful launch, this work created the foundation for system-wide advancement:

  • Sparked development of a company-wide design system

  • Gained leadership buy-in to invest in the Vue3 upgrade — unlocking improvements in front-end architecture and design craft

  • Demonstrated the strategic value of design in influencing technical roadmap decisions

  • Evolved AI from a prototype layer to a scalable, trusted infrastructure

Strategic Acceleration

The success of Smart Renewals enabled me to accelerate the delivery of a second AI-powered feature within six weeks — using this framework as a foundation:

  • Established a scalable design language for AI-powered workflows

  • Influenced how product and engineering structured future AI initiatives

  • Positioned design as a co-leader in ThreeFlow’s AI product strategy

What I Learned

  • Great AI UX is about enhancing judgment, not just automating steps

  • Clarity, not accuracy, is the root of user trust

  • Strategic storytelling turns “design” into organization-wide momentum

  • Design leadership is about making systems scalable, narratives repeatable, and outcomes aligned across product, people, and platform

This case study demonstrates my approach to designing AI-powered experiences that balance automation with user agency, resulting in measurable business impact and improved user satisfaction. I'd love to chat and share what parts of the vision were left on the cutting room floor—there's always more to the story!