Gamified car insurance

UK car insurance still leaned on broad demographic buckets: safer drivers often paid like risky ones because price was not tied to trips on the road. Most people think they drive better than average, so flat stereotypes felt unfair and missed real risk. Aviva needed a signal from the vehicle, not only the postcode on the form.

My JTBD research showed two core needs: young drivers wanted a fair chance to prove safe behaviour and lower premiums; families wanted transparency on what behaviours actually affected price. I led discovery that included ride-alongs with telematics pilot users, surveys with 2,000+ drivers, and competitive teardowns of black-box hardware programmes. Constraints: app had to work on iOS and Android without specialist hardware; scoring needed to feel fair and explainable; the app had to connect directly to Aviva's quoting and policy systems, passing a driver's score to the quote engine at conversion without manual re-entry. Success metric: at least 30% of users qualifying for discounts within 200 miles, with positive ROI within two years.

I led design for the UK's first smartphone-based telematics app, pricing cover from how people actually drive. Three options were considered. Black-box hardware installed in vehicles: rejected for installation friction and cost. OBD-II dongles: rejected for limited vehicle compatibility. Smartphone GPS and sensors: what I shipped. Any driver with a smartphone could participate without hardware installation or vehicle compatibility limits.

I owned the key UI decisions: the app used GPS to log acceleration, braking, cornering, speed, and phone use over 200 miles. Drivers got a 1 to 10 score, quick feedback after each trip, optional sharing with family, and a direct path into a quote. I designed trip breakdowns to show star ratings for braking, acceleration, cornering, and phone use so drivers saw where behaviour improved, not just a single headline score. I designed a badge system that recognised milestones (first 200 miles, 30-day safe streak, night driving mastery).

I validated through beta testing with 5,000 drivers across urban and rural routes; A/B tested badge visibility (visible badges increased 200-mile completion by 18%); tested score explanation copy with non-technical users to ensure fairness perception.

Aviva Drive passed 1M downloads in about six weeks, well above the annual plan, picked up Apple's 'App of the Week', and held around 4.5/5 in the store. Roughly four in ten users scored 7.1 or above and saved about £101 on average; most people in the programme qualified for some discount.

Because I designed trip breakdowns with star ratings per behaviour and visible badges for milestone progress, drivers corrected braking within three trips and 18% more completed 200 miles when badges were visible in beta, feeding discount qualification at scale and turning the business case positive inside two years. Perception of Aviva as inventive moved up by 33 points, so telematics read as a practical product bet rather than a short campaign.