Initial brief
Research and discover the problem for the existing investment creation and editing experience.
Background context
Over the past 5 years, customer complaints have surged regarding the experience of investment creation and editing.
In 2020, the company did a year-long pro-bono project to tackle the data entry problem specifically for one of its biggest customers. This leads to thousands of customer support and product hours. Still, this solution only solves part of the problem, the struggle of editing investment continues…
In 2022, one of our frontier Highway clients had chosen not to use our company’s solution to create and edit investment because of perceived usability concerns.
The impact is huge. The company lost 100% of client retention along with a decline in customer satisfaction.
I was lucky to be chosen to lead this discovery project.
Target users
Research - Journey mapping workshops
With the high-level problem in mind - The investment entry and editing experience is cumbersome and the clients are struggling while using the solution, the discovery team decided to run journey mapping workshops with the Customer Support team, Tech Sales team, Demo team and Support team members to identify clients’ action, thoughts, feelings and ideas for improvement for entering and editing investment.
This mural board captured users’ major feelings and thoughts throughout the whole journey:
Research - Testing the Existing
Since we were using proxies(internal team members who actively interact with clients) in the previous user journey mapping workshop sessions, there is the risk of capturing biased or incomplete data. I encourage the team to conduct additional usability testing sessions with clients using two existing investment entry solutions. The intention is to:
Observe real-life clients behaviour (rather than rely on memory)
Boost customer engagement (align with company strategy)
Gather baseline usability score (so that we know how much improvement is needed and measure the improvement at the end of this project)
Present sound data when pitching this new initiative to the VP
At the end of the usability evaluation, I captured the usability score for both existing solutions:
With the help of another designer in the group, we generated 18 insights, using value vs. cost diagrams to dot vote for priority and attached relative user stories for each insight.
Outcome for discovery
At the end of this discovery, I compiled this list of prioritized user stories as the single source of truth based on the user researches and value vs. risk exercise with the triad.
Iterative designs
After we had an in-depth understanding of users' pain points, my design partner and I drafted out a low-fidelity prototype for each user’s touchpoint.
In the company initiative discussion, I brought the sketched ideas and usability test quant result to the VP-level stakeholders, with the collaboration of our PM and tech lead, we succeeded in positioning the Redesign Investment Creation and Editing Experience Project into the top 3 company product initiative in 2023.
After getting approval to work on investment creation edit experience redesign, I started to map out the existing user flow and redesign the whole experience from strawman ideas into low-fidelity mockups for usability evaluation. And eventually, I created high-fidelity prototypes with detailed design spes for design handoffs.
Design highlights
1. Created a centralized place to display investments
2. Streamlined data entry process
3. Easier way to communicate
4. More efficient experience
Redesigned the information architecture
Utilize AI
To make investment entry suggestions
Have self-served user
By providing flexibility to configure the data entry form
Project take aways
- Run group workshop
It’s a time-efficient research method when we need to gather information from a large number of participants
- Communications
It's key to have constant communication and sync with the team about key points/takeaways and client knowledge.
- Run Affinity Mapping Exercise Collaboratively
It’s crucial to align ideas and mitigate bias when running affinity mapping sessions collaboratively with the triad or even the whole team.
- Prep a comprehensive deck when pitching new initiatives
Always discuss with the team and come up with a project vision that is aligned with company strategy and have visuals/ data ready when pitching new initiative