Building from scratch - a New Product
Full suite product design for a new business line, VirtualWealth®, 2017
Context
In 2016, the company introduced VirtualWealth, a robo-advisor (or digital advice) service. The senior management had set high expectations for the team to develop a full-suite product that included financial modelling, branding, a public website, a fully digital onboarding process, a client website, and mobile apps.
My Role
As the product design lead, I was responsible for the UX strategy, requirements distillation, information architecture, user flows, wireframes, content direction, UI direction, and project management for the entire front-end user experience of this large-scale initiative.
Challenges
Scale
The launch of VirtualWealth required extraordinary effort from all teams involved, including product owners, development, operations, marketing, and the small design team, which consisted mostly of myself and a UI designer who joined later. The project was a stretch in terms of its scope and complexity, and we faced added pressure from senior management to meet the tight deadline. To ensure successful delivery, I took on extensive project management responsibilities and oversaw the cross-functional team effort around design delivery.
Low Maturity of UX Practices
Another major challenge was the low maturity of UX practices within the organization. To achieve our business goals while maintaining high product experience quality, I needed to push every angle from business requirements, development, and UI design concepts to copywriting direction. I introduced UX methodologies such as journey mapping and wireframes, which were new to the organization.
During the initial phases, I faced many doubts from stakeholders who were unfamiliar with typical UX deliverables. However, after many walkthroughs, stakeholders acknowledged the effectiveness of the UX approach in solving product experience challenges and aligning cross-functional efforts.
Process
User Journey Mapping
As part of my UX strategy, I distilled the business requirements and created a user journey map that illustrates the various paths users take through our platforms. The journey map provided the team with a bird’s eye view of the platform experience, enabling us to stay focused on the most important user needs and interactions, rather than being feature-centric. By leveraging the journey map, we were able to better align our efforts and deliver an intuitive and user-centered experience.
Wireframes
I actively used wireframes to steer highly feature-oriented stakeholders toward focusing on high-level product experience goals. In addition, I leveraged the wireframes to provide a content writing baseline, transforming regulatory and financial language into a simple, engaging human voice. This approach represented a significant departure from past practices within the organization. Nonetheless, the interface writer fully embraced it, which led to a smooth and engaging overall experience for users.
User Flow
While the journey map offered a bird's-eye view of the visitor's experience, some paths required closer attention to optimize content and interactions for each user group. To address this, I led a user flow mapping session with the working group to capture complex iterations and edge cases. This allowed us to ensure that we delivered an intuitive and user-centered experience across all user groups.
Sketches
During the mobile app design phase, I sketched out ideas to facilitate quick discussions with the mobile development team. This informal approach was highly appreciated by the project team and helped save collective time and effort. By working closely with the developers, we were able to make design decisions that were both intuitive and feasible to implement.
Project Management Sheets
I took on additional responsibility to closely coordinate with the development team. To streamline the workflow, I created a custom sheet that significantly increased the development team's visibility into the design progress, reducing the need for ad-hoc status reporting. By constantly feeding the sprint cycles with design deliverables, we were able to stay on track and meet our tight deadline.
Result
After 18 months of hard work across the organization, VirtualWealth successfully launched to the public and was introduced to hundreds of credit union partners.
The platform received enthusiastic responses from partners, empowering them to navigate the changing financial services landscape with technology that meets the needs of key client segments.
During product demo sessions, a senior business lead noted partners praised the platform's excellent user experience. Colleagues recognized my contribution, as I took the lead beyond my role to bring a user experience that rivals leading competitors. A team member expressed admiration for my broad range of skills, which encompassed design and business, and my ability to handle complex requirements and stakeholder management. They also appreciated my patient and balanced guidance of cross-functional team members, all of which resulted in an amazing job overall.
“Kay continues to be a star performer, taking on an active leadership role – within the department and project teams. Kay is proactive, hard-working, and respected by her peers/others. She is extremely knowledgeable about design, as well as our business.”
