Building user trust through human-centered design
A multi-platform financial portal that allows customers to access and change their retirement information, investments, loans and plans.
Summary
Our team had the opportunity to solve a few UI/UX problems within the retirement/ savings sector with Voya Financial. Our main objective was to create a better user experience for the customer through a re-architecture and redesign of their web experience that showcased a “best-in-class” user experience. We also worked to establish an overall digital design system informed by design expertise, customer insights and subject matter knowledge within the retirement space to support B2C platforms.
Examination
Before we can solve our client’s issues we need to examine the current markets and research best in class models. Not only what other competitors are out there but who are using these services.
We needed to find out what problem Voya was solving and figure out how that solution has been used across other markets outside the financial insurance/ saving realm. We started off our exploration by creating a competitive analysis. When conducting our research we examined web and mobile companies outside of that market that handled customer information and customer experience well. We created “Lightening Demos” for the client to display current/ modern examples and how we could apply these best practices in their applications.
When creating user personas and journeys, we had to consider the wide range of users within the retirement planning industry. We created four personas based off of the largest chunks of user (Not Enrolled, Enrolled, Terminated, Not Retired, and Retired). With these groups, we were able to create a more detailed user persona for each group along with their motivations, user abilities and life stages.
One of the main issues with the previous Voya user experience was a poor navigation system. To solve for this our team conducted a card sort to analyze users’ and subject matter expert’s most important sections.
With our findings we recommended four key updates that must be made for a successful restructure.
Rename Cards/ Categories: Cards with unclear or vague names should be updated.
Give Context: Assign content by creating a hierarchy within the navigation.
Create the Right Pathways: Create navigation or display content in multiple places to support their journey.
Combine Similar Content: To avoid repetitive content that leaves the user unsure of where to click, reduce the mental load and group similar items on a single page.
Experience Pillars
To create our “Experience Pillars” we interviewed 12 different stakeholders. We distilled feedback into common user experience themes that would inform our “North Star”, and help support all design decisions throughout the engagement. Through card sorting this information we were able to uncover different users’ mental models to create the best possible information architecture.
Simplicity & Ease of Use
Our goal is to reduce the time and mental load it takes a user to complete routine tasks. The design should shield the users from the intricacies of the system. They should find what they are looking for quickly and with little effort.
Personalization
Voya’s portal services have a large and diverse user base. It’s important to design a system that speaks to all of those personas, regardless of where they are in their engagement journey. We chose to strategically surface relevant content at the right time.
Reflection & Education
Most users have minimal knowledge about financial planning, and are happy to keep it that way. That said, we did set out to create an experience that educated the user. We established points of reflection throughout the experience where we properly educated the user about the implications of their actions.
Retention
From our stakeholder interviews we were able to grab a few key take aways, one was the need to retain customers. We needed to consider the ease in which a user could transition account and educate them on the breadth of Voya’s offerings at the right moment.
