Overview
During a 12-week-long project, I focused on the design thinking processes and innovative design research. Along with my group, I selected the topic of providing protected solutions for the unique needs of RIA firm and their clients. Learn more.
We have redesigned the entire financial advisor onboarding application with the vision of reducing manual processes and streamlining operations with fewer clicks.
This project’s goal was to onboard RIA and Wealth Managers with an organization to market annuities, so that RIA and Wealth Managers can build their business and meet their customer’s financial needs.
My Role
I led this project’s Product Design – User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI). I have also collected constructive feedback from fellow designers to get their perspectives and improve my design.
Methods Followed: User Research, Interaction, Visual Design, Prototyping & Usability Testing.
Results:
- Increased MAUs (Monthly Active Users) and retention rate
- Decreased design handoff time to the dev team
- Improved Wealth Managers/RIA onboarding conversion rate
The challenge
RIAs and fee-based advisors are needed to enable their clients to gain wealth and reach their financial goals. Wealth Managers had challenges in onboarding experience where Independent RIA can learn/present, register, and sell financial products to their clients.
Goals
- Make it fast and easy to onboard Wealth Managers and businesses.
- Provide necessary product knowledge to control their time and client needs.
- Create a platform for innovation and deeper engagement.
HYPOTHESIS
Hypothesized the lengthy process of onboarding advisors through traditional paperwork processing, their respective communication skills, and how they handle the due diligence process will be the significant elements in maintaining an active onboarding process.
Solution
Help RIAs and fee-based advisors grow their practices by enabling their clients to gain more wealth and reach their financial goals. Create an application for Registered Investment Advisory firms, Where Independent RIA can learn/present and register and sell financial products to their clients.
Design Process
We followed the Double Diamond Theory and Lean UX process. Aimed to incorporate the key phases of Discovery, Definition, Ideation, and Implementation in our project.
The first step of the design process involved user interviews and desk research in understanding the behavior of the competitors and users. I believe getting this information early in the process is essential before having an idea or prototyping.
Analysis of Existing Solutions
Why the current process is complicated:
- Dependency on the paper-based agreements
- Poor application tracking
- Too many back-and-forth transactions
- No clarity if the RIA firm has already signed the onboarding agreement with the company or not
- No location-specific feedback
- No ability to track tasks
1. Empathize: with the users
- The Stakeholder interviews: Interviewed key stakeholders to gather insights about business goals.
- Value proposition mapping: Thinking about the product’s key aspects and value propositions: What it is, who will use it, and why they will use it.
2. Research: Pain and Gain Defines Everything
User Persona & Stories
Based on the inputs from surveys and interviews, I have created 3 personas to guide design decisions, and priorities and develop empathy with potential users.
3. Define: Find a Solution That Saves the World
User Journey Map: Designing an Ideal User Experience
The User Journey Map was a huge turning point for the RIA/IRA’s digital business and culture. It divided everything into “before” and “after” by causing a complete mindset shift in how the company viewed its product, users, and even the business processes.
Three primary questions informed my design strategy:
- How do you design for everyone, businesses, and individual clients?
- What contexts need to be considered?
- What’s the perfect onboarding process?
Created a customer journey considering important main KPIs to understand the entire user journey: awareness, consideration, decision, retention, and advocacy.
- Possibility to provide great customer experience
- Understanding which channels are important at which stage
- Opportunity to create a perfect messaging
- Opportunity to provide a high level of personalization
- Understanding your customers’ pain points
- Strategy improvement
Early on, it was important to understand the different factors influencing the onboarding experience. Therefore, I mapped all the possible concepts and translated this into the spectrums and situations framework.
4. Ideate:
This stage allowed us to ideate solutions based on the ideas we created with RIA/IAR onboarding regarding their User Journey Map.
Information Architecture: Everything in Order
- Created one for the individual for the internal employee.
- and the other one is functions connected to client affairs.
Low fidelity Wireframes
We quickly mocked up the app landing page from sketches to low-fidelity wireframe design in the first sprint. Due to the time limitation, we only highlighted the significant features and flowed within the product, but they are sufficient for the final presentation and usability studies. In our second sprint, we built a complete set of wireframes and an end-to-end flow to gain a holistic understanding of the user experience.
5. Design: Data-Rich Functionality Filled With Love
Design System
Products/Corporate Global Design System
A design system is a collection of reusable components, guided by clear standards, that can assemble to build any number of applications. The need for them goes hand in hand with the need for scale, efficiency, and consistency in Design.
Deliverables : Component library & documentation
