Skip to content
Jonathan HeavnerProduct & Systems Designer

04Regulated workflow designHudson Insurance Group, contract · Sep 2025 – Jul 2026

Hudson Insurance

Translating agricultural insurance operations into a workspace where finding an insured and working on one happen at once.

Problem
Underwriting for agricultural and livestock insurance means moving between many insureds and their policies. By my account, the earlier model repeated one loop for every record: a table, a detail page, back to the table.
My role
Product designer (contract). I joined a design effort already in progress, translated underwriting, regulatory, business, and technical requirements into buildable workflows, and established the product’s interaction foundation.
Key decision
Keep discovery and the workspace on screen together: the list of insureds stays in place, and choosing another insured refreshes the workspace without navigating away.
Outcome
Stakeholders understood the persistent model immediately, and discussion moved on to what the workspace should show. Shipping status is not documented.
The Hudson workspace as rebuilt from a design frame: the list of insureds on the left with John Smith selected, and his overview on the right with quick details, action items, recent activity, a current-policies table, and a coverage chart., enlarge to full resolution
ReconstructionRebuilt in code from a design frame, with synthetic data. The list of insureds stays on the left while one insured’s details, actions, activity, policies, and coverage fill the workspace.

01

Agricultural underwriting

I joined a design effort already in progress, on a new digital platform for agricultural and livestock insurance.

The work was translating underwriting, regulatory, business, and technical requirements into clear, buildable workflows. The application was built in Angular on an Ant Design implementation I considered dated; I recommended PrimeNG in its place, and the work moved toward a reusable component kit rather than one-off screens.

02

The round trip

The earlier interaction model repeated one loop for every record: a traditional table, a detail page, back, and the table again.

That repeated navigation became the design concern.

A design screen of the Insureds Dashboard: a flat table of insured accounts with name, tax ID, entity type, agency, policies, and status columns, filled with placeholder values., enlarge to full resolution
Earlier designThe insureds table: one flat list of accounts.
  1. Table
  2. Detail page
  3. Back
  4. Table
The earlier loop, repeated for every record.

03

Discovery and work at once

In place of the round trip, a persistent discovery panel and a persistent workspace emerged.

Discovery stays on screen. The workspace stays on screen. Selecting another insured refreshes the workspace’s contents in place, and nobody navigates away from either region.

Three decisions that shaped it

  1. Discovery and work happen at once, not in turn

    BecauseGoing from a table to a detail page and back again, for every insured, was the repeated navigation to remove.

    Trade-offA persistent discovery panel takes about 300px, roughly a sixth of the screen, away from the workspace at all times.

  2. Selecting refreshes the workspace in place

    BecauseThe underwriter should keep their place in the list while the content beside it changes.

    Trade-offThe workspace has to hold everything about one insured without a page change: contact, actions, activity, policies, coverage.

  3. Build from reusable components

    BecauseThe work was moving toward reusable components rather than one-off screens, and I recommended PrimeNG in place of the dated Ant Design implementation.

    Trade-offScreens give up one-off layouts in exchange for a shared kit.

  1. 1Nothing selected

    The Hudson workspace as rebuilt from a design frame, before a selection: the list of insureds with search, filter, and status tags on the left, and an empty workspace asking the user to select an insured., enlarge to full resolution
    ReconstructionBefore a selection: the list of insureds beside an empty workspace.

  2. 2An insured selected: the workspace refreshes in place

    The Hudson workspace as rebuilt from a design frame: the list of insureds on the left with John Smith selected, and his overview on the right with quick details, action items, recent activity, a current-policies table, and a coverage chart., enlarge to full resolution
    ReconstructionThe same list, with one insured’s overview beside it.
Finding and working: in turn before, at once after.

04

An interaction foundation

I established the product’s interaction foundation, creating reusable patterns that simplified complex underwriting and policy workflows.

The design file’s layers name the shared component set the screens were built from:

  • Tags and badges
  • Data tables
  • Panels
  • Breadcrumbs
  • Tabs
  • Timeline events

The design frames carry the names of USDA livestock and dairy programs (LRP, DRP, LGM); the overview’s policies table lists one insured’s policies across them.

05

Feedback

Stakeholders understood the persistent discovery and workspace concept immediately on seeing it.

After that, discussion moved on from the interaction model to the separate question of what content the workspace should show.

Try the interactive reconstructionRebuilt from the two design frames.