Progressive Security Affordances

✋ What is it?

This is a solution found on the Progressive website. When users are quoting insurances coverage, they're prompted to enter their Social Security Number to gather background information and determine and final quote. Progressive adds a small branded "Norton Secured" badge to the right of SSN field, as well as a lock icon (to the left of the field).

🤲 How does this interaction or solution work?

Progressive is one of the leading insurance companies in the country. Quoting insurance premiums is a vital step in the journey of customers who are buying insurance, so it's crucial for companies like Progressive to optimize this process.

To provide accurate quotes, insurance companies need to gather background information of the potential insuree. One essential piece of data to obtain this information is the Social Security Number of the insuree. However, SSN can also be used to steal identities and commit fraud, so customers in general dislike providing this information through online forms.

Progressive uses a branded security badge, as wells as other security affordances like obscured numbers and a lock icon, to increase the likelihood of getting this piece of data.

🙌 How does this interaction or solution work?

Trust and Clarity

Increasing trust is a critical goal for businesses that rely on personal information to provide their services.

In this particular case, Progressive can earn the trust of its potential customers by providing details on how they are securing private data.

Co-branding with a brand like Norton (which is a well-known name in the security space) can also help to earn the trust of customers.

On the other hand, customers who interact with businesses like Progressive can benefit from this increased clarity since this decreases concerns on how their private data is being handled.

It's important to mention that this user experience solution should be the reflection of a real security implementation that is protecting the customer's data.

Of course, it's possible to implement these type of affordances without any matching security implementation, but by doing so, this solution becomes an unethical way to gather personal data that could be compromised, hacked or leaked.

Make sure only to consider these affordances when you have systems that can back up your increased safety claims.