DASHBOARDS / GenStar Insurance Underwriting Dashboard
General Star GENESIS G2 Underwriting Workspace
Five tools replaced. One underwriting workspace. Built from the decision outward.
TOOLS REPLACED
ONE WORKSPACE
THE PROBLEM
General Star's underwriting teams were making risk decisions with end-of-day summaries, static exports, and five disconnected tools — none of which were built for the analytical work underwriters were actually doing in them.
I designed the first unified underwriting workspace on GENESIS G2 — including a self-initiated comparative audit that nobody asked for, which became the evidence base for every visual direction decision that followed.
THE PROBLEM
Fragmented tools, buried signals, and underwriting decisions slowing down.
General Star's underwriting teams were slowed by fragmented tools and inconsistent UI patterns — key signals buried across disconnected screens, decisions slowing down, and no shared view of what was happening across the portfolio.
The tools they had looked like Excel — because they were.
Legacy applications built for data capture, not decision-making. The tools worked — they just weren't designed for the analytical work underwriters were doing in them every day.
Legacy underwriting submission app — pre-GENESIS G2
Legacy loss rating output — pre-GENESIS G2
THE GAP UNDERWRITERS FILLED THEMSELVES
When the apps couldn't do the analysis, underwriters built their own tools in Excel.
The legacy apps handled submissions and record-keeping. They didn't handle risk analysis. So underwriters filled the gap themselves — custom Excel workbooks, rating tools, exposure calculators running alongside the official system. That gap was the brief. GENESIS G2 was the answer.
"The dashboard wasn't just a redesign — it was the first time General Star's underwriters had a single place where every signal they needed was visible at once."
Heard directly
Underwriting Lead
"I have no real-time data when I need to make a confident decision."
Underwriters were making risk decisions using end-of-day summaries and static exports. Critical signal data — market conditions, submission status, prior claims — lived in separate tools with no live connection to the workspace.
Heard directly
Senior Underwriter
"I'm navigating between five tools to build one picture."
No single workspace anchored the underwriting workflow. Every decision required assembling information from disconnected screens — external lookups, shared spreadsheets, and legacy tools with no consistent hierarchy or status model.
Heard directly
Claims Reviewer · Litigation MGT
"Critical details are buried. By the time I find them, the moment has passed."
Risk signals weren't surfaced at the point of decision. Underwriters had to hunt through dense data tables to find information that should have been visible at first glance — slowing triage and increasing the chance of missed signals.
Heard directly
Underwriting Manager · Excess Casualty
"I spend more time finding information than evaluating it."
The cognitive load wasn't the data itself — it was the navigation. Every lookup required context-switching, re-orientation, and manual assembly. The system was optimized for storing information, not for the act of making decisions with it.
KEY FINDING
The tools were built for data entry. Underwriters were using them for decisions.
The most important finding wasn't about features or layout. It was about a fundamental category mismatch between what the tools were designed to do and what underwriters actually needed from them.
GENESIS G2's tools were built for data capture. Underwriters were using them to evaluate risk and make time-sensitive decisions. Those are fundamentally different jobs.
That distinction came out of interviews with six underwriters across two teams. Once named, I brought it directly to the product owner and engineering lead — before any design work began. The workspace had to be built from the underwriting decision outward, not adapted from a data entry model inward.
"The gap wasn't missing data. It was that none of the data was organized around the moment of decision."
CORE TENSION
Data entry consistency vs. decision-support clarity — two legitimate needs in direct conflict.
I identified this tension early — engineering and underwriters were optimizing for completely different jobs. I ran a working session with both teams to make the tradeoff explicit before any components were designed. Getting that agreement upfront prevented rework later.
BUSINESS & ENGINEERING WANTED
Consistent UI across React and Angular
Material-aligned component library
Reduced engineering reworK
Reusable patterns across teams
Framework parity — no custom patches per team
UNDERWRITERS NEEDED
Real-time risk signals at a glance
Live market and weather data embedded
Dense AG Grid with triage logic
No context-switching between tools
Role-based workspace views
DESIGN RESOLVED
Tokenized Material theme for React and Angular
AG Grid with standardized density patterns
Unified workspace — all signals in one surface
Modular real-time widgets — weather and stock
Responsive toolbar specs
PROCESS
Four phases — discovery and audit to architecture and engineering handoff.
1
Discovery & Stakeholder Alignment
Interviewed underwriting leads, SR underwriters, claims reviewers, and underwriting managers. Audited legacy tools and mapped how decisions were actually being made — not how the system assumed they were.
2
Comparative Audit & Benchmarking
Evaluated Adobe Creative Suite, Payfactors, Zoho, Keap, and Freshsales for dashboard layout patterns — Adobe Creative Suite was the closest structural match to GENESIS G2's navigation model and became the visual direction benchmark. Self-initiated — used to establish shared stakeholder alignment before any design work began.
3
UX Architecture & Prototyping
Designed role-based dashboard flows with progressive disclosure — prototyped end-to-end before any component work began. Risk triage logic defined in partnership with underwriting leads and engineering.
4
Design System & Engineering Support
Tokenized Material components built for React, Angular, AG Grid, and .NET — implementation-ready specs that engineering could pick up without interpretation or rework. Spec reviews with engineering resolved framework conflicts before build began.
DESIGN DECISIONS
How research drove each design decision.
Four design decisions — each one a direct response to something we heard or observed from underwriting teams. The GENESIS G2 dashboard wasn't designed from convention. It was built from the underwriting workflow outward.
DECISION 1
Unified underwriting workspace — replacing five disconnected tools with one role-based dashboard.
Final GENESIS G2 Dashboard — unified workspace with shortcuts, recents, live weather and stock widgets
FINDING
Underwriters were navigating five separate tools to assemble a single picture of a submission. I mapped the full workflow with two senior underwriters — every context switch, every manual step. That audit became the evidence for consolidation.
INSIGHT
The cost of fragmentation isn't just friction — it's decision latency. I brought this framing to the product owner before wireframes began. Faster, more confident decisions directly affect policy throughput and loss ratios — that reframed consolidation as a business risk issue, not a UX preference.
DESIGN
Role-based dashboard with all critical signals in one surface — shortcut bar, recents, live data widgets embedded inline. I spec'd component behavior with engineering early so the widget system could be built modularly, reducing integration risk. Product and engineering signed off on the architecture before visual design began.
Designed for decisions, not data storage.
The dashboard was built around risk triage logic — surfacing the most decision-relevant signals first, with progressive disclosure for deeper context. Role-based views meant each underwriter saw what mattered to their position, nothing else.
Built once. Usable across every framework.
Every component was Material-aligned and delivered as engineering-ready specs for React and Angular — AG Grid handling data-heavy views without custom workarounds. Spec reviews with engineering resolved framework conflicts before build began, so handoff required no interpretation.
DECISION 2
AG Grid as the decision surface — not a data table, a triage tool.
AG Grid mock iterations — status badges, density controls, and column hierarchy
FINDING
Underwriters were sorting, filtering, and cross-referencing hundreds of rows in real time. I ran task observations with three underwriters to map exactly where inconsistent grid behavior broke their workflow mid-task. That research defined the AG Grid requirements before a single pattern was proposed.
INSIGHT
For underwriting triage, the grid is the decision surface. Inconsistent sort behavior and misaligned column hierarchy don't just create friction — they erode confidence in the data itself. I presented this finding to the product owner and engineering lead as a data integrity issue, not a UI polish request.
DESIGN
Standardized AG Grid patterns with predictable sort, filter, and row interactions — status badges color-coded to underwriting state, named insured and ownership visible at every row. I worked directly with engineering to define column hierarchy and density specs before build began, eliminating the ambiguity that had caused rework on previous grid implementations.
DECISION 3
Visual direction from audit — Adobe Creative Suite as the benchmark, not a blank canvas.
Miro comparative audit — Adobe Creative Suite dashboard benchmark across 8 enterprise products
FINDING
The team had no shared visual reference for modern enterprise dashboard patterns. I ran a comparative audit across eight products — Adobe Creative Suite, Payfactors, Zoho, Keap, Freshsales — before proposing any visual direction. Nobody asked for the audit. I ran it because proposing a visual direction without evidence would have been an opinion, not a recommendation. The audit gave the product owner and engineering lead something to react to — not just accept or reject.
INSIGHT
DESIGN
DECISION 4
Real-time widgets — surface the external signals underwriters were looking up manually.
Weather widget variations — 17 state variations covering all seasonal and time-of-day conditions
FINDING
Underwriters were leaving GENESIS G2 mid-workflow to check weather and market data for active submissions. Every external lookup — weather for property risk, market data for exposure — broke decision flow at the exact moment it mattered most.
INSIGHT
DESIGN
Stock widget variations — 9 variants for different display contexts
STRATEGIC CONTENT
The dashboard was Phase 1. The design system was the foundation for everything that followed.
The GENESIS G2 dashboard wasn't a standalone project — it was the first delivery in a larger modernization effort. Establish the centralized workspace first. Then use the design system as the foundation for every legacy app that followed.
PHASE 1 - DASHBOARD
Establish a centralized underwriting workspace. Surface the signals. Prove the design system works at scale.
The dashboard was the highest-visibility entry point — the place every underwriter would see every day. Getting it right meant proving the design system could work at scale, so every legacy app that followed wouldn't have to start over.
"Getting the design system right on the dashboard mattered because it was going to carry every other modernization effort that came next."
AG Grid and Standard Grid specs — component annotations built for cross-framework handoff
MY ROLE
Led UX design for General Star's underwriting dashboard — mapping risk logic into a decision-grade workspace on GENESIS G2.
WHAT I OWNED
I ran all interviews with underwriting leads, SR underwriters, claims reviewers, and underwriting managers independently. I ran the comparative audit across eight enterprise products before any visual direction was proposed — it wasn't scoped, I ran it because the team needed an evidence base, not an opinion. Full UX scope from discovery through implementation-ready specs: risk triage logic definition, dashboard architecture, Material token system, AG Grid patterns, weather and stock widget systems across 17 and 9 variants respectively.
HOW I WORKED
Designed for GENESIS G2 on .NET and Azure — Google Material token system applied across React and Angular for framework parity. AG Grid handling data-heavy views with standardized density and column hierarchy specs. Every component implementation-ready on day one — spec reviews with engineering resolved framework conflicts before build began, so handoff required no interpretation. Defined risk logic and decision paths in partnership with underwriters, product, and engineering before any visual design began.
THE CONSTRAINT
GENESIS G2 was a live enterprise platform — design had to work within existing React and Angular frameworks, not replace them. Every component had to be implementation-ready on day one. And the dashboard was Phase 1 of a larger modernization effort — getting the design system right mattered because it was going to carry every legacy app that followed.
OUTCOMES
Faster decisions, less cognitive load, and a scalable design system adopted across the GENESIS G2 platform.
25%
Faster underwriting decisions Clearer triage logic and reduced manual lookups compressed the time from signal to decision.
0
Custom workarounds
Material plus AG Grid delivered consistent patterns across React and Angular without framework-specific patches. Engineering no longer rebuilt the same patterns from scratch.
5→1
Tools consolidated
Workflow consistency established across teams. Standardized UI patterns and governed Material components replaced ad-hoc screen variations built by different developers.
G2+
Scalable system adopted across GENESIS G2
The component library and token structure became the foundation for every legacy app that followed. The dashboard proved the design system at scale before the broader platform migration began.
DELIVERABLES
Wireframes, Component System, and Final Deliverables
Wireframes 1
Wireframes 2
Wireframes 3
Wireframes 4
Component System 1
Component System 2
Component System 3
Component System 4
Weather Widgets
Dashboard
Claimant Form
Renewal Form
What I'd do differently
Involve underwriting leads earlier in component review — not just discovery. Some AG Grid density and progressive disclosure decisions required multiple revision rounds once real data was loaded. Earlier data-realistic testing would have caught those edge cases before handoff.