We started this challenge by aligning on the current issues and solutions in wealth management advisement. We found the following:
Hybrid systems help bridge the gap between traditional advisors and digital platforms.
Based on these findings, we hypothesized that Scotiabank needs increased implementation of hybrid systems in their digital wealth advisement platforms to support millennial investors.
To understand why clients find difficulties with digital wealth advisors, we conducted two decontextualized user interviews through video calls. The interviews were between 30 to 45 minutes with the main focus being to ask both general and specific questions about individuals’ experiences with digital wealth advisement.
During the interviews, notes were taken to record important information and insights gathered from the participants.
Inclusion Criteria
• Working millennials
• Actively making investments in the past year.
• Used digital or traditional wealth advisement services
Some Key Questions
• What is your current experience when interacting with your wealth management advisor through digital channels?
• Can you recall any specific instances where digital communication with your advisor was particularly helpful or problematic?
Here are some insights founds from 2 interviews on wealth management clients' experiences with digital advisement.
Pain Point: Most wealth advisement is generic and does not provide any specific help to my specific goals and investments.
Motivation: Want to leverage their current investment styles to gain more financial wealth in the long term.
.png)
Pain Point: Hard to communicate with wealth advisors consistently and feel like each meeting does not provide new information.
Motivation: Want an investment experience they trust with increased efficiency.
.png)
The next step was to take all the interview insights and start drawing themes that capture the most pertinent issues students face. This analysis involved an affinity map that helped deduce which theme was most important based on frequency of mentions within and across participants.
From these findings, we found 3 themes that capture the current experience of investors, and focused on the theme of personalized advice. This captures the main issue in the current experience of wealth advisement for young investors: a key group found in the secondary research.
Personalized Advice
Investors desire personalization in their advisement so that they can make decisions that fit their goals.
Autonomy
Investors want their investments to reflect their own personal goals and prefer to make them themselves.
Interaction Issues
Communication issues make it difficult to make confident decisions in a timely manner.
To further support ideation, we created a user persona to summarize the target user’s pain points, motivations, and behaviours, as well as look for opportunities to implement solutions.
Through empathizing with the persona, we brainstormed user stories that will help create a personalized experience for millennial investors. Using the user stories, we developed a task flow for the final solution.
Example User Stories:
• As a millennial, I want to learn what type of investor I am so that I know what financial tools to use.
• As a millennial, I want to know my investment patterns so I know when to seek financial advice.
• As a millennial, I want to receive recommendations based on my financial goals so that I can make informed decision quickly.
The task flow outlines key user needs such as personalization and enhance communication while integrating into the current solutions provided by Scotiabank's wealth advisement software.
From this stage, our UX team members developed a prototype that could then be translated into a functional mobile app through collaboration with our software engineer team members.
The final solution is a hybrid approach to Scotiabank’s preexisting wealth management software:
Working with a group of data scientists, software engineers, and other UX designers helped show how diverse skill sets can come together to make an effective final product. Each member is constantly relying on the tools and perspectives of each other to make sure that we are aligned on the final problem and understand the constraints we are working under. Involving other disciplines within the UX process also helped create an understanding of why the user’s needs should be the focus of any solution and I hope to employ this in my future work.
Key Learnings
Participating in a hackathon with strict time constraints helped me learn about rapid iteration in the agile UX process and how it becomes important to prioritize certain essential tasks. There is limited time to meet deadlines in the industry which is why it is important to understand different tools and strategies so that you know when they will be the most effective.
Next Steps
• Due to time constraints, the final solution only had the MVP. Completing the rest of the screens in the task flow would be a natural next step.
• Do some user testing on the current solution to understand if we were accurately able to solve the problem presented.
• Investigate some other user stories and further features that can provide personalization to clients.
User Research
User Testing
Branding
UI LIbraries
UI Design
Design Thinking
Qwonder
An app for students to ask questions during lectures and interact with peers.
View Case Study
You can reach me at the following links ↓
