Testing and improving a form-building workflow

Product Design
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Xactware
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2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Role: Product Designer & Systems Specialist
Domain: Property Estimation Software & Enterprise Workflow Automation
The Challenge: Making field insertion and expression logic easier to use within the existing form-building software.
The Solution: Designed a modular, logic-driven custom form builder with inline expression handling and an optimized field insertion workflow.
Key Results: In internal testing, the Add Xactimate Field task was 34% faster than the previous software version, with the same success rate. This result applies to that task, not the entire workflow.
Custom form builder speed dial action animation
Field Insertion Interactions: Testing drag-and-drop field addition mechanics.

Overview

Custom Forms was a critical feature for global property insurance customers. It required complex expression logic to support custom calculation rules across estimation workflows.

The Existing Software Context

The work focused on the existing Custom Forms software, including how users insert fields and work with expression logic.

Form builder concepts
Form builder concepts explored during the design work.

Decision Architecture & Trade-Offs

Decision Architecture: Form Field Insertion Pattern

Approach Trade-Offs & Technical Limits Decision Rationale
Option A: Speed Dial Floating Action Button (FAB) Small initial screen footprint, but obscured the form canvas and suffered from low visual discovery during field testing. Rejected: Small icons made the field-insertion options harder to discover.
Option B: Integrated Navigation Bar with Categories Allocated permanent horizontal screen area with clear text labels and fast drag-and-drop categorization. Selected: The Add Xactimate Field task was 34% faster in internal testing than in the previous software version, with the same success rate.

Design Iterations & Inline Expression Guidance

The design included Excel-like expression syntax, live formula previews, syntax templates, and contextual documentation to help users work with estimation rules.

Final form builder interface with expression logic
Final Interface: Logic-driven form builder with inline syntax guidance.

Measurable Results

  • Task-level internal test: The Add Xactimate Field task was 34% faster than the previous software version, with the same success rate. This does not establish a whole-workflow improvement.
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Want to discuss this project? Contact Joe at josephnewell90@gmail.com.