Automating an Asset Management company's offering
I was the main Product Designer on the team until sometime into the project when I brought in a Mentee to work alongside me.
Client
Asset Management firm
My Role
Product Designer
Duration
16 weeks
What I did
- Information Architecture
- User persona
- UI Design
- User testing
- Prototyping
Tools
- Figma,
- Whimsical,
- Google meet
Project Brief
I was contacted to design a system that automates the asset management’s offerings and processes its customers. After using paper and pens for so long, they are looking to reduce cost by automating it and providing the services on the go, via mobile and web.
About the brand
The brand is an Asset Management bank based in Lagos, Nigeria, with branches all over the state.
The current process for accessing and buying assets is over the counter at the office, owing to this, the company is spending a lot of money to maintain a large no of customer support staff.
The brand has been thinking of scalability and increasing the adoption of its product offering.
Business Goals
- Automating the investment process.
- Less or very minimal support calls.
- High user conversion.
- Increase in revenue gained from the conversions and sales of investment products.
- Increase in revenue as saved from employing a few support staff and relationship managers.
Key Questions
- How might we provide our offerings to our users on the go, to aid scalability?
- What is the best touchpoint for Users to buy our Investment offerings/products, at their own convenience? Website? Web App? Mobile App? or all three?
- How might we automate the process such that they can buy assets, and liquidate assets on their own?
- How might we design the process that it is intuitive and easy to use?
- How might we save valuable time (of our Users) and make more money in the process?
Current Design Impacts of this design
- Successfully automated the process, and made it readily available on the go via the mobile app.
Built a Component Library for the Design system, as there was none in the company before.
Improved the Design maturity of the company from no design (unrecognized) to user-centered design (Interested).
User personas
Our Customers are divided into two broad types -
- the Affluent customers and
- the High Network Individuals (HNI).
User personas
Empathy map for both persona types
Pain points
Pain points from the Customer include:
- Unstable economy and the Pandemic. This, we have little to no cover over.
- The dwindling value of the Naira.
- Investment illiteracy. Many users don't know the best investment that suits their needs. That's why we would offer personalized investment offerings for each customer.
- The categories of the customers are too broad.
Solutions
- Investment Calculator to help users make informed decisions.
- Allow investments in USD & NGN, as this will help protect the value of investments.
- The tiering system to onboard the different classes of customers easily.
- We have little to no cover over the effects of the pandemic but investment advising will go a long way.
User flow
Component Library
It was decided that this mobile app should be cross-platform and available for both IOS and Android play stores. It was decided that the mobile app should have light and dark themes, such that, Users can customize their experience. First, I started off designing a Patterns Library.
Visual Design
Having gone through the Requirement document shared with me, alongside the User flow, and wireframe, I proceeded to work on the Visual Design.
First, I spoke to the team further on Creative direction and Stakeholders' stance. We went over some applications to be sure both parties understand what was wanted.
Overall, the general look and feel were aligned towards contemporary because the Bank wanted to stand out from peers and what their competitors were doing.
Once my UI Designs were ready, I presented them to the Board of Directors of the Bank and got feedback. Overall, they liked it and had minimum edits in mind.
This stage ended once there was a prototype that is usable for the next stage of Usability testing.
Working with the Engineering team
I was involved with the implementation of the Application by the Engineers. The Engineers were on board from the start of the project. I played a more supervisory role with the Engineers. We continued communicating and I always test what they are doing (some form of QA), this is before the QA Personnel steps in.
The Application is almost ready, as it is in the final stages of engineering.
Usability testing & Iterations
The next step was the testing stage to see the chance for improvements, as regards the usability of the app. It was a virtual one over Google meets. Users were recruited from the Asset management firm's older customers.
For the Usability test, I worked alongside the Product Manager. We tested 10 participants virtually. The participants were tested with 14 different Test tasks within the product.
Some results from the testing sessions.
Other Impacts
Coming soon!
Conclusion
My key takeaways are:
- Listening to the Customers, as well as the Users is very important, especially in this scenario where both parties are different.
- Stakeholder management is very key.
- The product development life cycle is almost always ongoing and never-ending.
- Include more diversity & inclusion in the participants for each research method I undertook for this product.
- I would have loved to test very early on, and it might have had more impact.
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