Explaining the National Flood Insurance Program

Problem

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is unique and a little complicated. It’s federally backed, but sold through private companies. Depending on where a homeowner lives, flood insurance may be required or simply recommended. Rates and premiums change depending on the homeowner's risk level, which may be difficult for homeowners to assess. Many homeowners don’t realize they have to renew their flood insurance policies yearly until it’s too late: their home is flooded and they’re left holding the bag. The NFIP sought to explain high-level information about the program to the general public.

Solution

We developed a series of whiteboard-style explainer videos to explain some of the most pertinent questions flood insurance customers would have.

My Role

I brought a user-centered approach to the process and walked the clients through potential flood insurance customers’ journey with the program. I assisted the team with script writing. I created a visual style for the videos and presented them to the clients. I also animated the videos in Adobe AfterEffects.

How might we develop an accessible series of videos that clearly answer the most important questions about the NFIP?

Gathering requirements with the client team

First, we met with the NFIP client team. We talked through some of the biggest communications challenges they faced with the program, and what people seemed to struggle with. We used that to develop a series of questions that potential and current flood insurance customers would have. We planned to create one video to explain each question.

We also developed a list of requirements for the videos:

  • Short, no more than 3 minutes.

  • The videos should answer flood insurance customers’ questions about the program.

  • Clear language to bridge the gap from insurance-speak to plain language.

  • Conform to FEMA’s brand standards and use their colors and fonts.

  • Engaging and shareable.

This list included:

  • Why do I need flood insurance?

  • How do I buy flood insurance?

  • What do I need to know about flood insurance coverage?

  • What factors determine how much I pay for flood insurance?

Creating a first storyboard and visual style

We developed a series of visual style options for the clients to choose from. At the time, the NFIP didn’t have a formal style guide, so we had a lot of creative freedom so long as we adhered to FEMA’s color scheme.

We wrote a script using a casual informative tone inspired by Vox explainer videos. We developed a visual style inspired by videos created by Ready.gov. After getting approval from the client team, we produced our first video:

Back to the drawing board

Our team was very proud of how this video came out. We liked the aesthetic style, and we felt like we’d successfully answered the question of why someone might need flood insurance. Our client team was also happy with the video. Naturally, they ordered 11 more videos, each better than the last, right? Nope!

As we started developing the next video, our client team expanded. The expanded team had a new vision for the videos. They wanted to humanize the impact of flooding and wanted the videos to feature characters for viewers to connect to. They also wanted to see what the videos would look like if they were more narrative-based.

We scrapped the script we’d already developed for the second video and started working on new scripts and stories. This created additional challenges. What kind of people would we choose to represent the average flood insurance customer? What did their lives look like? Were we accurately and sensitively representing all Americans? Our team did our best to create a ew script and storyboard that could assuage our clients’ fears, and the client team approved both. We developed a draft of the second video in line with the style of the first video.

When our clients looked at the video, they realized that it wasn’t what they had envisioned for the project. It was too cartoony, and didn’t feel like it matched their vision of the mature NFIP customer. Further, the NFIP client team was also in the process of developing a series of live-action survivor stories: video interviews where real flood survivors shared how flood insurance helped them recover. Those videos humanized the flood insurance program better than the animated videos.

Ultimately, our clients and our team felt like we’d lost our way with the videos. It was time to go back to the beginning.

Adopting a user-centric approach

Our client team had changed and so had our internal team. We decided that the best approach would be to start from the beginning, but be thoughtful about how we proceeded. I led our clients through an exercise where we clarified who our audience was and talked through their journey. We outlined:

  • Who was our audience? Who were the decision makers in households? What spoke to them?

  • What did they need to know? What did they already know?

  • What did our audience experience when interacting with the NFIP? What did they feel at each step of their journey with us?

This exercise was incredibly helpful at this point in the project. We also used these answers to guide us throughout the rest of the project.

Defining a new visual style

Throughout this point in our project, our clients kept mentioning whiteboard-style explainer videos. They’d mentioned the whiteboard style in the past, but we’d convinced them to try a different style.

Reader, I’m going to be fully transparent with you. This was my first time working directly with not only this client, but any client. I heard them say they wanted a whiteboard video several different times and several different ways and honestly, I didn’t listen. I was young and inexperienced and couldn’t understand why they would want a whiteboard video. That style didn’t speak to me—the Artist, who went to not only Art School, but European Art School—and I didn’t like it. I put together several different styles that I liked that had a similar look and feel to whiteboard videos but weren’t whiteboard videos. I’ll never forget my team lead explaining, gently and graciously, “Christina, I think they just want a whiteboard video.”

She was right, of course. The clients had been asking for it since day one. I put aside my pride and put together a strategy for how we could create whiteboard videos in a way that gave us full control, the ability to make edits and changes, and didn’t look like it was produced by generic whiteboard-video software.

The clients loved it.

Creating whiteboard style videos

We created a series of four whiteboard videos that answered the questions we outlined previously. We designed each video so that the viewer could see each step of the process as a sort of built-in infographic. This provided great value for the clients as it allowed us to create two products in one.

Lessons Learned

Despite some hiccups in the process, our team successfully delivered four whiteboard-style videos for the NFIP. Here’s what we learned:

  • Focus on the end user. We struggled when we focused on what we wanted to make rather than what would solve our customers’ problems. Reminding ourselves how we fit into the customer’s journey helped keep us on the right course.

  • Focus on the goal of the project. We struggled when we lost sight of our original goal and focused on creating character-driven narratives rather than explainer videos.

  • Be flexible and adapt. We had to course correct a few months into the project, but we learned from it and pivoted rather than giving up.