The client

RHP Ltd - Fintech startup operating in the field of customer-centric financial platforms that combines algorithm, data analytics and machine learning to provide innovative and personal financial services

Objective

Create a mobile app that consolidates users pension plans, insurance coverages and long term savings. Each plan will be analysed against users profile and needs. If a better alternative will be found, the app enables digital execution on switch, purchase or cancel the existing coverage.

My role

Ux/UI Designer (research, personas, interaction design, visual design)

Final product showcase

Wireframes and High fidelity prototype

Research

In order to understand the trends in the Pension/Insurance field in general, and situation of Israeli citizens in this area, i conducted a research. Also I sought to uncover the needs and frustration of the target users so i could find the best ways to determine the solutions.
10+ Online research reports and articles
Online survey
3 Interviews

Market Research

I started with secondary research to familiarize myself with social services systems, pension and insurance funds.
After organising gathered information i could see the obvious PROBLEMS that find expression in the retirement planning management
  • People change their job on average 11 times during their employment lifetime which makes it very difficult to trace all current and previous retirement plans.
  • Study done by PwC in October 2018 discovered that 84% of the population in the community are simply not aware of their retirement plans and the expected income at retirement. Clearly, this lack of knowledge beforehand is a critical barrier to long-term financial planning and decision-making to remedy the situation.
  • People could save money simply by switching to other programs with better fees and yields - but there is a lack of transparency in the social security field, so there is a very little movement in changing funds program till ones retirement.
  • This is a new trend - to worry about your personal savings plans, because people trust less the government. One of the reasons of such behavior is that there is an estimation that there will be a pension crisis, due too longer life off citizens nowadays and inefficient use of money.

Interview findings

During the interview phase i had a meeting with 7 people. I wanted to hear what the interviewers know about pension and retirement plans, to understand  what they think and what they fill about this subject. After reflecting the data accumulated I could obviously stress the major barriers and needs of users.
Major barriers and sources of discomfort
  • Lack of awareness
  • Lack of knowledge
  • Lack of transparency
  • Lack of a digital solution of satisfactory sophistication and flexibility
  • Lack of affordable access
Now I could sum several user needs like:
  • User needs to have an easy tool to see his financial status
  • User needs to know about alternative paths that can save his money
  • User needs to have a solution to execute an upgrade of specific fund
  • User needs to understand about retirement field

Survey findings

15 questions
55 respondents
Survey respondents extensively illustrated the demographics of target audience. Near 80% percent of them are full time worker who are my target users. The ratio for men and women are almost the same, quite evenly spread out to different regions of Israel, and belongs to different age groups. The important discoveries of the survey are:
  • Have inadequate financial knowledge (When tested on financial concepts, only 24% demonstrated basic financial knowledge)
  • Users that ready to actively use an app of such a kind are users between ages 35-48 (this is the range of ages that are 1)most interested in the technologies and 2)worried about their retirement status, so ready to to actions in order to improve the situation)
  • Don't seek professional financial help. (Only 27% are seeking professional financial advice and consultation)
  • Aren't happy with their current retirement situation. (When ranking satisfaction on a scale of 1-10, 34% were very unsatisfied)
  • Are financially fragile (Nearly 30% of Millennials are overdrawing on their checking accounts.)

Personas

My research findings indicated that there many types of users with different needs. I used all qualitative data that i collected during my research and created personas Rachel and Ben, in order to illustrate the key audience and to help me and stakeholders gain more sympathy for the users concerns, and to help us to concentrate on the most important issues to solve.

Solution statement

App will help people to optimize their future by making the most out of one of the biggest financial asset in life (retirement and pension plans) by next core features:
  • App will automatically collect and aggregate all the information about the different retirement plans and present the consolidated data in a day-to-day language anyone can understand.
  • App will aggregate all the data from historical plans the person accrued during their employment history together with the current fund and users personal data in order to show the best alternatives that will save users money.
  • App will give an option to execute transfer/purchase/cancelation of fund so that it will improve the performance of users financial status and will help to achieve the optimal pension plan that fits their goals and needs.

Information architecture

Before making wireframes we needed to define a features that we will include in our app. We did it as a group team, i introduced to other team members personas, so they really understand who the features are for and then we did post-it notes session on the wall. Below i present most important features for the app:
After everybody agreed on the feature list, i grouped them, so that i will have a better picture of the modules we need to build.
And last but not least - is prioritisation process. This is one of the most important task for the hole team, so that will choose the right features from the long list of good ideas the most important, realistic, and urgent for now.

Sitemap of mobile app

Interaction design

Pension Data Collection

Insurance Data Collection

Transfer Fund

Pension Profile states

Insurance Profile states

Ideation

Sketches

I moved to ideation and started with sketching some of the ideas i had in my head. In the beginning, it is just about brainstorming, so I list out a jumble of words and draw a flow with a tiny squares and like this i can spill out my thoughts and to understand better what am i looking for. Then i can see parallels and aspects that fit the most and then i start to draw sketches for actual screens.

Wireframes

Visual Design

Stileguides

High Fidelity Screens

Testing

There were couple of rounds of usability testing. Some were with the team workers, some with the testing group on early stages of the design and there were testing after app deployment. All participants were able to complete all tasks, however there were some interesting findings that could improve user experience (some implemented, some are not yet).
Insights:
  • Registration process: Page with the explanation about the following process during the tests on the early stages showed that users read what is expected. But during real interaction with the app users didn’t read this content and this reduced conversion rate, meaning that this page doesn’t give an impact - should remove it from the flow
  • Intro screens - we should work more with the content written. Not every user understand why he need to use the app
  • Password wasn’t in the registration process at the beginning. This task appeared only after user get the financial data. In this case user needed to do authentication again and create a password. It is long process, that we could save by moving "create password section" in the beginning of the registration, straight after user did verification with OTP
  • After the registration is done and user send request to collect data - appears screen "Request sent successfully" that disappears and transfer user to the next process on the registration process - questionnaire. When user finishes questionnaire - appears screen "Finished all registration process". First "success state" confused users, because the next step of the questionnaire didn't seem logic, because this screen gave them feeling of completion, while it is not. Recommended to live only one "successful state" after questionnaire
  • Pension profile: On the screen performed an amount of total collected pension. And there is a button that takes user to other screen with more data about retirement forecast, how much he will get when he will retire and pie chart with the funds segmentation. During testing appeared that this is the most important information and users would like to see this data straight on the pension profile

Final thoughts

This project was the best opportunity to learn, because i was into the project from the beginning till the deployment . I learned to balance between customer goals and business needs. Also i learned how to develop ideas and to sharpen them with the team by brainstorming. What I loved about designing such product is that by increasing user retention, i'm actually helping people to have a better financial future and to remove friction between pension and insurance complicated world and people that want to get into it.I believe that designed app is a good place to start, but i have to notice that due to time constraints, the pain points and solutions that were highlighted  are based on my assumptions that were built while researching the subject, so i recommend to do further research that may show other interesting aspects that may find expression during the app usage.
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@2020 by Eka Braunstein