Taking on an Open Innovation approach, the Luxembourg insurer Foyer has decided to publicly share its know-how of its graphic and digital creation processes. We believe this is an amazing initiative which will interest all those who want to interact with Foyer’s services.
by: Delphine Sabattier
photo: Kaori Anne Jolliffe
featured: Steven Lozach and Geoffrey Crofte
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Producing a logo, adapting it for an app, a banner, or an event brochure… a tremendous amount of time is often wasted on retrieving elements, ensuring that the graphic tenets are respected, updating them, or agreeing on a new creation? Fortunately, no one has yet measured this loss of time and energy, but everyone is well aware it exists.
Foyer, best known for its insurance business, has over time developed the expertise in mastering interface design processes: “Three years ago, we did not have a design department. This meant that there were many disparities in our interfaces and the profiles of people who led creative projects. We then set out to create interfaces that would save us time and enable us to meet the needs of all internal departments very quickly, thanks to upstream feasibility studies,” recalls Steven Lozach, Head of UX at Foyer.
“Teams can now focus on creating products that satisfy our three main principles: usefulness, usability and desirability.”
A repository of several tools is being set up at Foyer which include a graphic library and a technical library with almost 100 components in the form of a Design System. The development and design teams will tremendously benefit from this repository.
Today, Foyer can boast of having a design agency within its departments, comprised of 10 designers with varied profiles: “It required a lot of manual work internally. Initially, it was not easy to get everyone to adopt a new way of working that combined UX Design and Agility. But, in the end, developers and designers save time, they know who to ask questions to, and our Product Owners are delighted. Now, when we kickstart a project, we no longer go into the code without a process or upstream thinking. Teams can now focus on creating products that satisfy our three main principles: usefulness, usability and desirability,” explains Geoffrey Crofte, Lead UX Designer.
The Foyer Design System contains a catalogue of resources, rules, guidelines and best practices on design quality at Foyer. By launching this site, Foyer is demonstrating its commitment to providing a unified and consistent experience for its customers and employees.
“A real estate startup, for instance, could offer its customers property insurance via a simple button in its app…”
Geoffrey and Steven confirm the insurer’s ambitions in terms of innovation, as well: “Foyer aims to be a technical company specialized in insurance services… and not the other way around!” they smile. “Ultimately, the Foyer Design System will facilitate the implementation of a platform through which partners can easily connect to Foyer’s APIs. A real estate startup, for instance, could offer its customers property insurance via a simple button in its app… Foyer aims to aid in this process by helping automate and provide a friction-free digital insurance experience,” says Geoffrey Crofte.
For now, the Foyer Design System has only revealed a small part of its toolbox. Everything is easily accessible online. Initial feedback has been positive, according to those in charge: “We are responding to a need in Luxembourg”, they conclude. The Foyer Design System could inspire other initiatives of the same kind. Similar players in Luxembourg could be preparing to unveil a project in the near future and this can only help in shifting the dynamics around the launches of digital technology in the Grand Duchy.
