Problem Context: An insurance company was spending significant amounts of time and money to train their adjustors. Specifically, the issue here is that an adjustor is typically only as good as their experience adjusting. That is, a new adjustor reviewing a claim on a home might miss certain vital details that could result in differences of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Solution: As an intern, I was very enthusiastic and vocal about the application and benefits of game-based learning or gamification. I took the initiative to give a presentation on the benefits of GBL to the leaders of many relevant departments. Relating to insurance adjusting, I offered a solution to create a virtual reality-based game, developed in either Unity or Unreal Engine, that would allow adjustors to quickly and rapidly go through scenarios to identify minor yet vital details in a fun and engaging way. I estimated that two hours of “playing” such a game would be equivalent to approximately 80 hours of real-time, in-person experiential learning – a massive return on investment, especially when considering other logistical expenses.
Result: Unfortunately, not all endeavors end in success, and this was one of those cases as a result of my failure to communicate. To be clear, the idea was in fact a huge success – just not at the company I interned at. The company I worked for did not take the idea seriously, and years later, other companies began implementing this exact idea, getting ahead of the curve and ahead of my company. The failure here was my own, and exists in two parts: for one, I was not experienced enough to communicate the value effectively. My presentation tended to be overly verbose and included minor details that lacked persuasive impact on the audience. For another, there were other technical details I was not prepared to answer because I failed to conduct a thorough informational interview with an actual insurance adjustor in the company. Nevertheless, this experience was immensely valuable in my professional development, and I’m eternally grateful that they gave me the opportunity to try to innovate and create my own path, even as just an intern.
