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Advanced investing

Project: FinTech

Channel: Cross-channel apps

Timeline: 2023 - 2025

Role: Leading product designer

Tool: Figma

Team: Asset management & Customer success support

Problem: Due to the transformation in the back-end systems, it was necessary to rebuild certain contracting & investment processes for both internal and external users.

Solution: Adaptations in the contracting & investing processes and deployment of new user-friendly apps for multi-channel usage.

investing.jpg

KPIs

  • Increase friction-free contract processing & data population across systems

  • Shortening serving time on the branch advisory within the investing processes

  • Improve process digitalization in the complete workflows across investment products

  • Boost pure digital & digital-assisted investing and support all branch investment advisory functions

Business requirements

  • Adjustments to the contracting process for all types of investment contracts

  • Creation of new apps for branch advisory & clients to streamline the contracting process

  • Integration of new investing SaaS functions into the actual investing processes & workflow improvements

  • Optimization of current front-end functions and creation of cross-channel processes to enhance overall business growth across all segments

Situation

Based on the intended transformational changes in the back-end systems, it was decided to re-align respective contracting & investment processes for the advisory functions as well as for a client usage to synchronize all to support key business drivers.

Business objective

  • Improvement of internal & clients' proceses regarding investment products

  • Enabling investment base & conversion increase on the multi-channel level

  • Adjustments in the business & IT architecture and integration of new front-end apps for contracting & advanced investing

Context

Challenges

Constraints

  • Wide scope & high business expectations to elaborate into a realistic deliverable epics & stories within a set pipeline and specifically to create a split between MVP and next phases

  • Predicted extensive architectural & technical dependencies between applied systems and across interfering projects

  • Business decisions made from a high-level perspective might be limited or backfired by insights & analysis during the later project stages

  • Time-consuming preparations on the business side and limited resources & capacities on the IT side due to the involvement in several paralell project streams

  • Process digitalization & UX scope remarkable dependant on delivering certain sub-components within the desired architecture in proper time & scope

UX approarch

I aimed to assess the effectiveness & usability of the involved processes across their overall complexity and the extensive range of potential use cases. This meant balancing business expectations with customer needs and journeys across multiple stages of their life cycles. Starting with reviewing business goals & presented documentation, through the process mapping up to suggesting design recommendations & solutions, gradually during each stage of the project.

Discovery

Project workshops

These activities included several workshop rounds for discovery and business briefings involving business representatives from all segments and product owners on one side and business architecture, UX, IT & solution architecture on the other.

These exercises aimed to unite the various expectations on different levels and align on the preparation of business requirements, resulting in the SAFe epic documentation.

We aligned on that ...

Business objectives & high-level requirements are clearly defined with respect to revising the current state and identifying areas for improvement. These include:

1. Developing cross-channel process applications to facilitate a smooth transition of back-end systems.

2. Revising existing contractual processes and creating new applications.

3. Conducting a thorough reviews of the investment processes in their current state, as well as planning for future extensions in line with agreed architectural changes.

4. Preparing detailed process mapping reviews and customer journey mapping for a variety of use cases and business scenarios, which will contribute to the design solutions and subsequent phased IT deployments.

Process & customer journeys mapping

As one of my key responsibilities as the assigned leading designer on this project was to inspect the involved contracting & investment processes from the user perspective, I called out a series of workshops with business & product owners and business & solutioning architecture.

In these meetings, we have been discussing all aspects of the incriminated processes, where I intended to balance all three solutioning pillars - business viability, technical feasibility & user desirability. These activities helped me gain insights on different levels and shaped my work on the in-depth customer journeys while respecting technical & legal constraints. 

I dealt with the complexity as follows ...

At this stage I conducted certain steps to translate business complexity into precise mapping artifacts.

Contractual process of investment agreements:

  • Identifying the core flows for each contract type and investment services.

  • Stipulating the workflows, systems & internal teams involved upon planned architecture.

  • Distinguishing relevant marketing segments & user personas for specific use cases & digitalization levels.

  • Applying happy and unhappy scenarios as well as relevant edge cases in line with touchpoints & data population.

  • Involving potential cross-channel data reporting, opportunity triggers & internal tasks notifications.

  • Connecting front-end user flows to the data thresholds, interconnections with databases & back-ends.

Investment products & advisory services:

  • Identifying service types & concerned investment products in scope of the new architecture.

  • Stipulating all concerned user flows, systems & internal teams involved upon planned architecture.

  • Applying for different marketing segments & user personas in line with specific use cases & service digitalization levels.

  • Applying happy and unhappy scenarios as well as relevant edge cases in line with touchpoints & data population.

  • Involving potential cross-channel data reporting, digital funnel tracking, marketing opportunity areas & digital nudging with notification engines.

  • Connecting front-end user flows to the data processing points & waiting assessments for databases & back-ends dial-ins.

By pursueing all above stated principles and activities, I basically prepared set of comprehensive customer journeys in detailed manner as well as high-level process mapping covering the complete new process & product ecosystem targeted by this project scope.

Design

Trade-offs

During the preparation work, we moved several stones related to existing processes, which allowed me to openly challenge the business architecture while discussing customer journeys with my colleagues. This open and in-depth discussion enabled us to gain a clearer understanding of what could be feasibly delivered at that time and what aspects were non-negotiable for us. As a result, we were able to finalize our trade-offs in favor of the MVP phase. Here are the most remarkable ones from a UX perspective, that had to be dropped but not forgotten. I kept them in evidence in an extensive UX backlog.

  • Focus on branch advisory services

  • Specific digital use cases on-hold

  • Limited data visualization 

  • Drop of certain investment service

Focus on branch advisory services

As a designer, I was supposed to drive digital processes in the first place. However, this proposed the coverage of new front-end interfaces for advisory staff due to the expected technical updates, which will have a bigger impact on branches. However, in my opinion, this led to disproportionately less space to improve user experience in the mirroring digital twin app for clients in the MVP phase.

Specific digital use cases on-hold

While preparing customer journeys with target scenarios, we found out that certain back-end architecture constraints disabled enrolling specific use cases as intended. Having temporary workarounds seemed to be too critical for timely deployment; thus, we had to skip this service branch for the time being, despite this situation might cause a declined user experience for certain types of clients in the digital flows, which I stressed.

Limited data visualization

Based on the user data, I knew for certain that having a predictable & exact kind of data visible in the app means a lot for smooth digital investment management. I was sure that this was non-negotiable for me as a designer as well as for product owners, however strick timeline together with technical constraints showed a different direction. Fortunately, this was only for a temporary period to be fixed within the next release completely. Therefore, we from the business side accepted this but asked IT architecture for later commitments.

Drop of certain investment service

This consequence of process transformations, I felt, was a most significant intentional shift in the user interfaces. With user data in hand, I tried pretty hard to make the service survive. Unfortunately, despite all the presented UX arguments & data collected, I had to accept that those user flows to be dropped, consequently determined by the planned deployment of the new IT & business architecture. Still, I filed these decisions.​

Key UX directions

  • Intensive preparation of detailed customer journeys for multiple use cases, which supported white spot inspection for related processes. Once it occurred, I involved all respective parties within the project team so we could fix or find workarounds effectively.

  • Coordinated & thorough questioning focused on the domain understanding as well as clarification of the business expectations & requirements specification, where missing.

  • Active participation on talks with legal & compliance to stick to the constraints in order to maximize effectiveness of the later design work on the screen flows.

  • Connecting the dots between business requirements and technical feasibility while shaping the design proposals for further iterations and refinements, with the ultimate goal of representing end users' needs.

  • Identifying the core prioritized processes and assigned user flows, which I addressed upfront in my preparations and drew attention to primarily in order to close them with the business colleagues first.

  • Challenging particular process parts, user flows, or information on screens if this made sense from the user perspective, as well as acting as a gatekeeper for solid consistency in the interfering interfaces on purpose.

  • Concerning UI standards, we set the corporate branding rules and the application of our design system with UI components, in cooperation with UI colleagues responsible for the design system. The aim was visual consistency & continuity across contained front-end interfaces and interfering sub-processes. 

  • Since this contained apps for both internal & external usage, the accessibility topics were part of negotiations. One half of this belonged to the development scope; however, for the rest under the design scope, I took care of this during the design process. I applied those principles not only in the clients' processes but also for internal usage, if there was a potential change of showing the screen to the clients.

  • Active coordination with the business/IT analysts during the hand-over in the sceening phases prior to development. I supported the communication between business & IT solutioning by acting as a bridge translating the business specifications into the front-end analyses materials. This contained additional findings, user stories refinements, or design adjustments for me.

Usability testing

After several iteration & design refinement rounds, although the design work still remained in progress, I decided to conduct the usability testing with investment advisors in order to verify some critical user flows in the branch scope. I wanted to test some of my assumptions to gain further arguments for the upcoming meetings with segment representatives. It contained the following examples, which helped me produce some design advancements:

  • Main contract conclusion & editing:

    • It mattered to our testers to keep consistency throughout these flows, reminding the current workflows, advanced by tooltips & explanatory microtexting for managing this activity easily for every colleague coming with a different level of experience, even for onboarding newcomers.

    • Testers also raised their interest in having direct cross-linking for key process parts to the related systems in case of unhappy scenarios to resolve situations in real time during the meeting with the client.

    • All testers confirmed the usefulness of advanced & new functions in the common front-end app, which emphasised the need for having instant data population & real-time contract processing at hand.

  • Data management & visualization:

    • Testers also helped me understand the usual routine of accessing and verifying particular data about the clients' investment contracts and which of them might be excluded from our design, or, on the other hand, which are really crucial to keep as-is.

    • Most of the testers confirmed the necessity of data flow & coordination across channels in terms of digital-assisted processes.

    • Some of the testers were curious about the cases where they might be assigned to serve clients from multiple segments.

UX decisions

In this part of the project, since we all still saw a lot of white spots in the business specifications, I intentionally initiated several design workshops to boost the certainty of the right direction while working on the draft for the new front-end apps. Well, sometimes it really felt overwhelming​ at first. However, the more I kept consulting with SMEs & experts, the clearer the domain knowledge became to me eventually. This equipped me with the confidence to keep asking thorough questions to inform my design decisions as well as to facilitate the slow motion towards sharpening the business specifications. Here are the main conclusions and decisions I pushed through during the alignment sessions with the colleagues, starting with branch processes and carrying on with clients' part in an extensive way.

  • What are the contractual details of primary relevance to be displayed for the branch? All features, actions, and data set mirroring paper agreement setup.

  • Why do any of these need to be taken over in the new interface in the first place? During screen drafting, we often figured out that something might be replaced, simplified, or even skipped if the legal or compliance relevance is lower & not harmful.

  • Are there any missing points or gaps in the drafted flows determined by the expected technology shifts? We not rarely realized that, even with good intention, we can't take the old process blueprints and put it in the new frame automatically. Still, adaptions & compromises had to be made.

  • How intense would be the impact of the sceen layouts on the interconnected data saving into the back-ends? Upon my direct experience, this was key & very critical aspect of the MVP delivery package where the haviest negotiations happened with the direct impact on the instant refinements in the designed screen flows.

  • What are the specific differences in eligibility for different types of users? This was another riddle to be decoded in the wise complexity of access criteria internally and later on for the different client segments.

  • How should cross-channel tracking, reporting & opportunity notifications occur? This area of concern seemed to be crucial for setting proper internal communication within multiple databases as well as customer success support functions.

  • Are there any significant dependencies on the in-time deployments fron other projects? This made me feel pretty aware of huge influence between different projects and their deliverables before there are even completed. Thus, I was also actively in touch with different designers and IT contractors to stick to the purpose of our user flows correctly.

Investment contracting

Clients' processes

Having in mind the mirroring processes for clients as well, business requirements stipulated the feasible scope for this area. As a client defender, I observed several gaps between the business intentions & user needs.

Branch processes

Branch processes earned a significant focus in the project scope, which is why the bigger portion of time & space had to be dedicated to design for internal usage per received business requirements.

Contract changes

Upon business decision, there was started a significant update of contracts processes and their legal application in further related flows. This determined plenty of aspects covered in the project scope.

Key UX directions

  • Deep dive into the domain & process strustrures as a foundational discovery for building solid ground for later design proposals.

  • Buying in the key business & product partners for the common goals of establishing outstanding user experience throughout involved processes for our branch advisory colleagues as well as for the clients.

  • Open & transparent discussions and questioning about the business priorities and facilitating solid ground for keeping promises to buesness & end users in form of finalised requirement documentations.

  • Active participation in a series of project workshops & alignment meetings for business segments and producing actionable UX suggestions in line with agreed steps.

  • Leading the design process across concerned processes, platforms & overlapping subjects of interest in tandem with the project manager & product owners by holding constant communication streams.

  • Ensuring a clear & conceive user flows across front-end, middleware to back-end systems and data population through the databases.

  • Together with UI colleagues in charge of the design system, we make sure there was established a visual hierarchy,clarity & consistency with emphases on accessibility & responsivness standards.

  • Proactively, I contributed to the drafting of functional testing scenarios to not forget any specific situations from UX point of view. Furthermore, I took part in scheduled multiple rounds of business functional testing afterwards.

  • Active coordination with the business/IT analysts during the hand-over in the sceening phases prior to development. I supported the communication between business & IT solutioning by acting as a bridge translating the business specifications into the front-end analyses materials. This contained additional findings, user stories refinements, or design adjustments for me.

Usability testing

Due to the extensive scope of this project, we needed to revisit our agreements regarding the scope and timelines several times, even during the execution phase. After these implementation rounds, I reached an agreement with the product owner and other key colleagues to proceed with usability testing involving our clients. I managed to prepare challenging testing scenarios that would cover essential aspects of investing flows and guide us through the thought processes of both new and experienced investors.

Basically, having prepared the hypothesis together with my cooperating UI colleague, I organized this usability testing with a sample of our clients, which covered new & advanced investors across all geographical areas and of socio-demographic variability to ensure transparency and relevancy of any obtained insights for my later presentation to the business partners. Here, I produce limited examples of our findings for further iterations.

  • Entry points & supportive functions:

    • Testers confirmed the correctness of the majority of design decisions regarding the proposed hierarchy of information on the screens.​

    • Some testers added a couple of supportive remarks regarding copywriting and explanatory microtexting for better orientation among services, mainly for inexperienced investors.

    • All testers understood well the proposed supportive functions with the educational & guidance purpose as intended, and here and there added some additional remarks for fine-tuning.

  • Portfolio:

    • Here, all testers proved my original hypothesis of data visualization & accessibility, as they were always keen to compare to other investment apps & providers in the market based on their own experience.​

    • Some testers were more digitally skilled than others, and these pointed out more specific notes, which I really welcomed as valuable challenging points for discussions with IT solutioning as well.

  • Advanced investing functions:

    • In general, as expected, all testers warmly welcomed the intended changes content-wise; however, they stressed a couple of areas for further improvements regarding data structure or complexity in visualization.​

    • All different perspectives collected from these various client types on those functionalities & user flows equipped me with solid, relevant arguments & perspective shifts to my business partners & solutioning architecture.

    • This turned out to be pretty game-changing, not for the first release but rather for a long-term actionable plan, which I was confident would be contributive to with my suggested improvements. 

UX decisions

After being briefed on this part of the project scope, I dedicated substantial time to developing a comprehensive set of customer journeys that cover the entire ecosystem of investment services. This involved examining the process details through personal consulting sessions, as well as utilizing the provided process maps and additional information for all customer segments and levels of digitalization. The discussions I initiated aimed to establish a complete understanding of the project, which would serve as a solid foundation for my UX analysis and design work. I particularly focused on the fact that this scope extended beyond a single platform. Therefore, I needed to ensure that my design solutions allowed all interconnected platforms and processes to function as a cohesive unit in the end.

  • Mobile-app entry points - Given the as-is state, I wanted to maximize the synergistic effect of app familiarity for the clients and incorporate the adaptations, where required. However, I still needed to remember not to overcomplicate but rather structure the layouts based on service hierarchy & logical mental model as well as variations for multiple personas. I admit here we negotiated a lot to balance UX principles with business expectations.

  • Supporting processes in the mobile app - For clients' sake and to support a gradual learning curve, I intended to add new supportive functions & processes. These, of course, had the potential to help clients overcome the novelty of the added parts but also strengthen their confidence with investing processes on the contunuous base.

  • Portfolio data streams & visualization - This topic started as a non-negotiable for me as the designer & business at first, but resulted in compromising with IT solutioning for a temporary shortage in the visualization. Thus, I crafted multiple alternatives for various technical options, based on multiple iterations with my colleagues.

  • Connectivity to the contracting  - This project involved integrating multiple platforms, making contracting a high priority for successful implementation. I was particularly concerned about the complexity of this integration, which significantly influenced my design solutions. I focused on ensuring precise technical interconnectivity, considering different paths for various scenarios and use cases among the involved platforms.

  • Advanced functions -  The inclusion of these new funtionalities varying for end clients to branch advisory, and as such, was quite intense to cover by internal and SaaS platforms. Here, I heavily cooperated with business & IT teams to facilitate the design part of the agreed scope. This included UX recommendations for key user flows together with UI adaptations on accessibility & component responsiveness. Still, from my perspective, there were intense discussions with the IT solutioning team on the scope & timely feasibility to respect user experience standards.

Investment services

Mobile-app approach

From the business, we had the intention to keep the mobile app the main selling channel for most segments. I could completely understand this business goal, however, I also gained feedback from various clients, who would appreciate having a responsive desktop version as well.

Investment portfolio

Collecting data about clients' preferences for full information on their portfolio at hand in their app gave me & product owner a strong argument for the business & IT solutioning to keep this in scope for certain. This could support a strong user experience. 

Digital investing

Considering the market situation, where the vast majority of clients seek comfortable digital services, I consistently emphasized the importance of providing all investment services at a high level of quality for users, which was also the objective of this project.

Final reflextions

Assignment in this long-term project has been one of the most challenging yet fulfilling experiences for me. From the very beginning, I really feel that this project could play a significant role in my career because it allowed me to utilize the full spectrum of my skill set.

I am grateful for the opportunity to collaborate in this extensive scope where I can represent the voice of users. My ultimate goal is to create a sustainable user experience. I strive to connect with people and empathize with their situations, opinions, and experiences, which I believe was a valuable asset in working within this scalable, agile project team. Despite differing perspectives, I consistently maintained an open mind, listening to others with empathy and assertiveness.

As the lead designer on this transformative project, I was able to fully utilize my skills in analytical thinking, attention to detail, agility, and project management. These abilities were particularly valuable during challenging situations when progress slowed or came to a halt for various reasons. In those moments, I effectively supported the project manager and product owners while ensuring that the UX principles were upheld whenever challenges needed to be addressed with the team.ard the UX principles if any challenges needed to be brought up to the team attention.

From the perspective of my role as a leading designer, I managed to cover:

  • Business briefing & participation in the creation of SAFe epic documentation.

  • UX contextual & domain research from business material & SMEs consultations.

  • Active contribution to the Discovery & design workshops.

  • Collecting & presenting user feedback regarding critical user flows.

  • Preparing & guarding UX/UI & accessibility requirements.

  • Contributing to the risk analyses from the UX point of view.

  • Support to business on creation of functional specifications.

  • Full-range process inspection & customer journey mapping with product owners, business architecture & IT solutioning.

  • Preparation of wireframes, mockups & managing iterative review loops with the project team.

  • Organizing usability testing sessions, presentation of insights & suggested adaptations to the project team.

  • Cooperation with business & IT analysts during the screening phase for handed-over designed screen flows for technical refinements of user stories into the development.

  • UX backlog with deprioritized, postponed, canceled & rejected features & requirements with the direct or indirect impact on user experience.

  • Maintenance of design decision history documentation caused by shifts in business scope, prioritization, or technical/legal/compliance constraints.

Reflecting on the project, I feel immense gratitude for the substantial work I delivered while navigating the complexities of this domain in the regulated field.

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