AIA Qi Digital Delight

Background

design.aia.com

AIA has invested in Qi, its digital design system, to create consistency, usability, and delivery efficiency across customer and agent-facing digital platforms. However, as AI-assisted design and coding tools become more common, usable and pixel-perfect interfaces are becoming the baseline.

The next level of digital experience is about how the product feels: fast, polished, reassuring, modern, memorable, and delightful.

Some stakeholders perceive Qi-based interfaces as bland. We do not believe the answer is more decoration or louder visuals. Instead, we want to define how AIA can create more polished digital experiences through better use of motion, haptics, photography, illustration and AI assistant behavior.

The Ambition

When someone sees or uses an AIA digital experience, they should immediately feel it was made by a digital leader - with the polish, restraint, and design confidence associated with companies like Apple, Google, Airbnb, or OpenAI.

Objective

We are not looking for a broad transformation programme or full platform redesign. We need a practical set of Digital Delight Recommendations that help AIA teams make Qi-based interfaces feel more modern, polished, engaging, and emotionally satisfying.

The work should be applicable across mobile apps, desktop/tablet portals, websites, etc.

Scope

This work builds on existing Qi guidelines and AIA brand foundations - it does not reinvent them. The goal is to stretch what already exists to feel more modern, polished, and emotionally engaging.

• Motion and haptics recommendations on existing user journeys designed with Qi.
• Photography and illustration guidance uses AIA's existing brand photography and illustration guidelines as the baseline.
• UXUI copywriting guidance applies to Qi's existing copy patterns and microcopy conventions
• All recommendations are anchored in specific experience moments and always show motion, haptics, visual direction, and copy working together and not in isolation

AI-accelerated delivery is expected. The vendor should use AI tools and available MCPs (including Figma MCP, design system MCPs, and AI coding agents) throughout the project. Proposals should reflect how AI tooling will be used to deliver higher quality work faster, and outputs should demonstrate this in practice.

The vendor should propose a focused package covering the following:

Deliverables

1. Digital Delight Principles

• A shared definition of delight for AIA digital experiences - specific, not generic
• When to add delight and when to stay quiet - including which AIA contexts warrant more delight vs. more restraint (e.g. onboarding to a new feature or health milestone celebrations vs. claim status updates)
• How to stretch Qi to feel engaging, without breaking consistency
• How motion, haptics, visual direction, and copy always work as a single cohesive response to a moment - not as separate components applied independently
• What delight is not for AIA - to guard against over-animation, forced friendliness, or brand misalignment

2. Market Leader Reference Library

Create a curated reference library showing what _"digital leader quality" looks like across brands such as various creative agencies, or in-house brands like Apple, Google, Airbnb, OpenAI, and other relevant examples.

3. Delight Recommendations

Areas of coverage - the vendor should ensure the following are considered across the full set of moments:

Motion - microinteractions, page transitions, loading states, success / error / empty states, AI assistant states, feature onboarding and health milestones. Examples should use practical tools such as Figma, Lottie, CSS/React, Claude, GitHub Copilot, or AI coding agents. After Effects should not be the primary workflow.

Haptics - success or confirmation states, AI assistant flow, health milestones and feature onboarding. The vendor should define when and why to use haptics, noting high-level iOS and Android differences. No code is required.

Photography and illustration - AIA's existing brand standards establish a starting point: photography principles around positivity, candid real-life moments, and diversity; prompt structures anchored in terms like "candid", "relaxed-looking", and "natural lighting"; and an illustration style defined by everyday surrealism, textural shading, playful scaling, and the use of AIA Red as a unifying accent. These are useful foundations but are written for brand and marketing contexts.

This work should extend them substantially for digital product contexts (e.g. apps and websites). For example, composition, how talents are dressed and posed, lighting and color tone treatment for health, servicing, and AI assistant contexts; For illustrations, when to use illustrations without it feeling oversized or decorative; How to direct or prompt to create a specific look and feel that is delightful and on brand.

Content and microcopy - language and copy are a delight layer equal to the visual and interactive ones, and should always be considered alongside them. The vendor should provide before / after rewrite examples for common Qi patterns.

4. Example Concept Outputs

Create a small set of concept examples showing how the recommendations come to life across key AIA digital contexts. These do not need to be full product redesigns - they are focused demonstrations of delight applied to real moments.

Required examples:

1. AI Assistant - AIA+ mobile app
2. • Demonstrate a flow like launching animation, thinking/loading state, response state, and completion state on mobile.

• Cover relevant motion (typing indicator, response reveal, action cards), haptic moments (confirmation, alert, completion), and microcopy tone.
• Show how the assistant feels native to the Qi design system while feeling polished and trustworthy.

3. AIA+ portal with AI assistant enabled (desktop)
4. • Demonstrate a delightful design for desktop/web version of AIA+, especially when there is a AI Assistant embedded, interaction model, and visual states for a wider canvas.
5. Meeting health and wellness goals
6. • Demonstrate the delight moments around health engagement: nudge and progress toward a goal, milestone achievement, streak recognition, and encouragement after a setback.

• Cover motion (progress animation, celebration moment), haptics (milestone), content (motivating but not patronising microcopy), and photography/illustration direction for health contexts.
• Show how Qi components can carry emotional weight without custom visual language.

7. Rewards and engagement
8. • Demonstrate delight within the rewards experience: earning a reward, unlocking a benefit, redeeming, and an empty/opportunity state.

• Cover celebration motion, content delight (reward confirmation messaging), photography/illustration for reward contexts, and how the experience feels considered and engaging rather than gamified.
• Highlight how restraint and timing make rewards feel earned, not cheap.

Preferred Format

The output should not be a static PDF.

Preferred formats include:

• Documentation pages that can be adapted into design.aia.com
• Prototype
• Lightweight handover deck and checklist

The vendor should recommend how this work should live within design.aia.com, for example as sections on:

• Digital Delight
• Motion
• Haptics
• Photography for Digital
• Illustration for Digital
• Content Delight
• AI Assistant Experience
• Stretching Qi

Timeline and Approach

The project can start anytime, with final delivery required by August. The ordering of activities to create deliverables should be proposed by the vendor.

Success Criteria

This project will be successful if AIA receives a practical system that helps teams move from:

Clean and consistent but sometimes bland

to: Consistent, polished, pleasantly surprising, confident and recognisably made by a digital leader.

The vendor should also propose how success should be measured - both during the project and after delivery.