The Virtual Room: Our test and scale approach

An exciting moment is upon us – Lloyd’s Virtual Room is almost ready. We’re preparing ourselves for the September 1st launch of release 1.

We want to acknowledge the efforts and expertise of all those involved – so thank you. However, it’s important to note that this isn’t the finished product; it’s only the beginning. We’ve moved very fast to ensure the release is fit for purpose in the last six weeks. But rest assured, there’s lots more to come for Virtual Room and its users in the coming months.

Our approach for Virtual Room

Like much of the Future at Lloyd’s programme, we’ve adopted an iterative, ‘fail fast, get it right faster’ approach to how we think about – and design for – Virtual Room. This lets us test and adopt new features and functionality quickly, and discard elements that turn out to be unimportant or without any real value.

Working like this helps us to base our decisions on customer insight, including the key features we implement in each release. It also means we decrease the risk; smaller, regular releases of new features and functionality let us develop and design in sync with the market and emerging design and technological innovation.

Why YOUR feedback has been so helpful to us

We have already adapted our initial release and roadmap based on the testing feedback we’ve received. A few examples of this include:

• Simplifying the information contained in an individual’s Broker or Underwriter profile
• Modifying the layout to ensure availability of users and search results are prominent. (Testing proved that availability is the biggest priority for brokers, to both understand where a person is and how to contact them appropriately and quickly)
• Descoping some features to build direct chat into the priority list for release 1

We’ll release small, and expand our testing step by step

Release 1 will be a small release to our summer test group of US Property teams (a mix of underwriters and brokers). We will then scale to include more companies or focus on developing a broader range of Virtual Room features depending on the feedback we receive.

Ideally, we’ll be looking to onboard more companies (still US Property for now) as we go, but we may need to focus on developing more features before it makes sense to do this. If you're interested in joining the list of those wanting to part of the next release, register here.

We’re busy preparing for the first release on September 1st. Shortly after this we will share our product roadmap with you so you can understand what’s in the pipeline for Virtual Room, and our longer-term vision beyond release 1.

As always, your feedback and inputs here are really valuable to ensure our approach and design direction is as streamlined, future-facing and as relevant to user needs as possible

_{To get involved in and join a later release please sign up here. Also – make sure you get your teams and leadership involved. We want everyone to have a say in building the Future at Lloyd’s.}

_{Please visit the Virtual Room webpage for the latest news and developments.}