The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) is a provincial crown corporation responsible for driver licensing, vehicle registration, and road safety initiatives in the province of British Columbia. ICBC is committed to making sure that B.C. drivers are well-informed and supported on the road. One of these initiatives is the ICBC Road Test Booking platform: a system that helps existing drivers upgrade their licenses and prepare new drivers for the road.

In September 2019, FreshWorks began work on a complete digital transformation for ICBC’s Road Test Booking Application. The ICBC Road Test Booking (RTB) Application now aligns more closely with the ICBC brand and user experience standards, making it easy for customers to: 

• Book a Class 5, 6, 7, or 8 road test or motorcycle skills test (MST);
• View all upcoming appointment slots and testing locations; 
• Access road test booking records from the online portal;
• Cancel, rebook or confirm an existing appointment.

ICBC needed a new digital home for road test bookings — one that emphasized a shift to a simpler booking process and a better user experience for B.C. drivers. Every year, more than 3 million British Columbians visit ICBC to book appointments and tap into all sorts of city auto services: collision claims, auto insurance, vehicle registrations, inspections and transferring ownership. ICBC wanted to create a modern platform that would make the process of booking and confirming road test appointments easy and intuitive, one that prioritized the needs of B.C.’s drivers.  

ICBC had outgrown its existing structure and needed a digital transformation for their road test booking application. The user interface needed to align more closely with the ICBC brand and user experience standards. The user experience was also mired by the fact that information was scattered across the experience, interrupting the user’s mental flow to book an appointment. ICBC needed a development partner to provide an easy-to-use platform for booking and managing appointments online. Backed with our experience developing elegant and highly functional web applications for the public sector, we gladly stepped up to the challenge.

  Discovery 

The project followed a waterfall/agile hybrid approach with distinct phases for Discovery, Design, Development and Testing using Kanban boards. Starting with the Discovery phase, the FreshWorks team reviewed ICBC material which included the results of past usability studies, the ICBC Brand Book, analytics, and feedback from customer satisfaction surveys to inform the re-design. 

 UX Research and Design

Next, our UI/UX Designers conducted a UX Review: a process that involved a thorough analysis of the existing ICBC Road Test Booking system, with a strong focus on user experience and business value. Our designers then collaborated with the ICBC team to come up with user personas, journeys and present a new UX flow. 

 Workshops and Refinement

Our designers then conducted a Research Workshop. In this half-day workshop, we dug deep into the analysis of the UX Review and formed the foundation for second-iteration personas, user stories and user journeys. We sketched out the landscape for the kinds of users the application encountered, the kinds of devices they were likely to use, and the kind of experiences they are used to. We also identified pain points and rough user stories for refinement in the subsequent development phase. 

 Development

In the Development Phase, FreshWorks collaborated with ICBC to build out an intuitive front end that integrates with ICBC’s existing backend.  ICBC has a team that maintains their API endpoints and FreshWorks quickly developed a rapport with the developers to enable cross team communication. The responsive web design uses Angular to ensure that the application renders well on a variety of devices and screen sizes including mobile, tablet, desktop. Our team learned a lot about enterprise level application development in the process and successfully developed the application over the course of 3 months.

  Responsive Design 

The application is built to be responsive across all device types including mobile, tablet and desktop. The web application automatically scales its content and elements to match the screen size on which it is viewed. This keeps images from being larger than the screen width and prevents visitors on mobile devices from needing to do extra work to read content and schedule appointments. 

  SMS Reminders 

Drivers receive automatic reminders about upcoming appointments via. SMS. These reminders give drivers enough time to organize their schedules so as to not miss the appointment and reduce no-show fees. 

 Geolocation Features

The geolocation feature enables users to look up ICBC testing centres in their area so that they can book an appointment nearest them. 

  Calendar Integration

The application includes a feature that enables appointments to be added to customers’ calendars such as iCal, Google Calendar and Outlook.

  Accessibility 

The application’s accessibility requirements are improved, geared toward visual acuity and adhere to AA standards.

A Digital Transformation for Road Test Bookings

The result is a platform that provides a more unified, transparent and modern experience while serving the needs of over 3 million British Columbians. FreshWorks developed an intuitive, web responsive front end that integrates seamlessly with ICBC’s backend endpoints. The team improved how customers are authenticated within the application and worked with ICBC IT resources to implement a new calendar and map feature for booking appointments. 

The digital transformation for ICBC’s road test booking application helps simplify and improve the user experience. Now, the application includes an advanced search feature that enables customers to search for appointments on multiple dates, times, and locations and then add their appointment time into their calendar using popular calendar platforms (such as iCal, Google Calendar, and Outlook).

The application was built with an Angular front-end and Java 7 as a back-end. The application is hosted on an IBM Websphere server with Oracle as a database, supported by RESTful APIs. 

British Columbia is forecast to grow by over 60,000 citizens each year which will provide a significant source of demand in auto insurance and licensing. It’s an exciting future for the province and one that the digital transformation for ICBC’s road test booking application is designed to help B.C. face.