Westland Insurance
Practicum
In Spring 2025, I completed a two-month practicum with Westland Insurance Group, one of Canada’s largest and best-reviewed insurance providers. My main projects included redesigning the internal employee SharePoint platform and collaborating with a senior service designer on research for a newcomer program. Alongside these, I supported various smaller projects, such as designing icons for new benefits sub-products, conducting a UX audit for the insurance broker website, and providing UX/UI recommendations aligned with the company’s design system.
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SKILLS
UX Research
Service Design
Visual and Graphic Design
Prototyping
Information Architecture
Cross-Collaboration
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CLIENT
Myself
Product Designer
Senior Service Designer
Director, Client Experience & Service Designer
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TOOLS
Figma
Miro
Sharepoint
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TIME
Feb - April, 2025
MAJOR CONTRiBUTIONS
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PRODUCT DESIGN
Improved the internal employee website and provided UX/UI recommendations.
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SERVICE DESIGN
Collaborated with senior service designer and Interaction Design student to conduct a research about the newcomer program.
KEY PROJECTS
Collaborating on a Newcomer Program, where I supported research through competitor analysis, persona development, and journey mapping.
I contributed to the redesign of an internal employee website on SharePoint, where I created a current site map, style guide and Sharepoint templates for future consistency. I started with creating the sitemap that helped me to see the overall IA of the website and analyze it.
During my SharePoint presentation to the Learning and Development and our CX team, I walked them through my UI decisions, site structure, and best practices for internal page layouts. I learned how to use professional design terminology and explain the "why" behind each decision. Step by step tutorial to show them how to find certain tools on Sharepont.
During my practicum, I was responsible for creating a style guide for SharePoint. This involved decisions about layout components, typography, icon, text and image usage, and others.
ADDiTIONAL CONTRiBUTIONS
My first completed design task - creating and finalizing icons for the Westland Benefits program, which gave me a real sense of achievement.
Conducting a UX audit for the Front Row Insurance Broker website to identify usability and accessibility improvements.
Interesting task - creating voice recordings for Westland branches using the Revoicer platform (an AI-powered tool that converts text into realistic speech). My goal was to ensure that the messages sounded warm and friendly. I carefully adjusted punctuation and spacing to create natural pauses and intonation. After generating the recordings, I listened to them and made phonetic adjustments where necessary to improve clarity and flow.
LEARNING
I initially worried that I might not clearly communicate my ideas to such an experienced group of professionals. To my surprise, the team’s feedback was both encouraging and insightful. One member told me, “You showed us some great ideas to consider moving forward,” while another noted that my work touched on governance and best practices. This experience taught me that effective communication is less about perfect fluency and more about delivering a clear message with meaningful impact.
