Simplii Financial, embarked on a strategic initiative to introduce a cutting-edge investment app, aiming to provide users with a modern and seamless experience for managing their investments. As the Senior Design Lead, I led the project, focusing on creating a user-centric design, enhancing usability, and delivering an aesthetically pleasing app.
My role: Senior Design Lead
Company: Simplii Financial and CIBC
UX Designer: 3
UX Researcher: 2
Project duration: 4 months
Year: 2022
Skills: Design Strategy, UX Research, UX Patterns, Wireframing, UI Design and Design Leadership
Overview
Simplii Financial and CIBC Investor’s Edge partnered to launch the Simplii Trading Platform, a digital-first wealth management offering under the Simplii brand. The Simplii Trading MVP release was focused on self-directed investing services and fractionals.
High-Level Design Strategy
Step 1: User Research Plan
To kick off and accelerate customer discovery for the self-directed investing platform, the following was delivered in phase 1 of the engagement:
- Initial Discovery & Identification
- Provisional Persona Creation
- Validate Personas
We began by understanding product goals and their measures of success to build a hypothesis on potential user segments. The intent of the research plan was to validate the provisional personas and assumptions and explore users’ goals and needs to inform design principles and high-level designs.
Research Goals
- To understand and validate our three provisional personas.
- To validate hypotheses and assumptions.
- To identify the value and experience gaps in direct investing to inform product and design decisions.
Research questions
Primary
- What was the previous experience of our target users?
- What were their goals, needs, and pains?
- What tools did they use and why?
- What perceived value were they getting from the experience?
- What were the friction points that could serve as areas of opportunity?
Secondary
- What were some of our target users’ favourite services and mobile apps? (For comparables.)
Research Analysis and Key Findings
Research Methods
One-on-one interviews were conducted with approximately 10-12 participants for each persona to reach saturation. Each session lasted 60 minutes, including a short introduction and open-ended questions about their experiences in their direct investing journey.
Following those conversations, we coded our data to identify behavioural themes. In terms of planning, the three personas were divided into three research projects, commencing with the primary persona, followed by the secondary, and ultimately, the peripheral.
The primary characteristics of the study participants were:
- Regular savers (individuals considering or currently setting aside a portion of their paycheck) or those with a lump sum to contribute.
- Individuals with a DIY mentality instead of relying on an advisor for their financial tasks. This included investigating whether, when encountering a banking issue, they called or visited the bank or conducted online research.
- English speakers within Canada (excluding residents of Quebec) who were either.
- New to investing or had a few years of direct investing or robo-investing experience.
Persona Research Project 1: Experienced and Speculative Investor
- Experienced in trading with DI platforms.
- Engaged in social networks for investing ideas.
- Fee-conscious individuals.
- Desire to learn more or take investing to the next level.
Persona Research Project 2: New to Direct Investing
- Experienced in saving in high-interest savings accounts.
- Engaged in social networks for investing ideas.
- Fee-conscious individuals.
- Desire to learn more or take investing to the next level
Persona Research Project 3: Experienced and Passive Investor
- Experienced in trading with DI platforms and investing in mutual funds, ETFs, or individual stocks.
- Invests in broad market ETFs or asset-allocated ETFs for the long term.
Screener for attributes not targeted:
- High credit utilization or financial difficulties.
- High-net-worth individuals primarily use a financial advisor without a desire to DIY or trade on their own.
- Existing CIBC Investor’s Edge customers.
Hypotheses and assumptions
General (for all personas)
- A low-fee direct investing platform is the right tool for our personas to address the problem of wealth building.
- Putting in minimal time and effort to learn the platform, understanding financial terms/acronyms, and researching securities are activities that they expect to perform to meet their goal of wealth building.
- Delays in transferring funds and/or system outages (reliability) are a roadblock and cause for frustration.
- Users are interested in and understand the fee structure of various DI products.
- Users “shop around” and may seek social validation to compare DI investing applications, platforms, and products.
- A Direct Investing product backed by a big bank has more merit/value than a stand-alone DI application/product.
- Assumption: Information provided by Simplii on how to invest is trustworthy.
- Assumption: If the onboarding experience is on par with competitors from an ease-of-use and time commitment perspective, this will be enough of a motivator for them to join as they will have access to banking products as well.
By Persona
- Experienced and Speculative Investor
- Product: Derivatives such as options trading are important.
- Hypothesis: Having a clear product roadmap may keep them invested in the platform until derivatives become available in a future release.
- Hypothesis: Being able to start trading in minutes is vital to compete and is expected.
- This persona does not overlap with any key personas on CIBC Investor’s Edge.
- Assumption: Nottingham as a product requires an endorsement from the social network.
- Primary social networks (Facebook, Reddit, Twitter)
- Product: Derivatives such as options trading are important.
- New to Direct Investing: “Success” is beyond something tangible such as tasks or completing their first trade but also, how comfortable they feel about their portfolio over time.
- Hypothesis: These individuals require validation to help massage and ease their fears of the unknown. Regular reminders or reporting to indicate that their portfolio is within a certain range of being aligned with averages would help.
- Hypothesis: There is value in seeing fees saved since joining the platform.
- Experienced and Passive Investor
- There may be significant overlap between the ideal robo-investing and passive investing personas. The differentiator is that individuals who choose DI are looking to reduce fees even further, and they have a DIY mentality.
Step 2: Primary Feature Identification
Design thinking workshops:
- Feature Valuation for Users: Facilitated a Design Thinking Workshop involving stakeholders, designers, and potential users to ideate and prioritize features. Identified key features such as real-time market updates, personalized portfolio insights, and a user-friendly interface for quick trades through collaborative exercises.
- Alignment with BRD: Ensured that the features identified in the workshop aligned with the Business Requirements Document (BRD) and company objectives. Features were cross-checked to ascertain they fulfilled regulatory compliance and met technological feasibility.
- Competitive Analysis and Benchmarking: Conducted a comprehensive analysis comparing the identified features with competitor platforms. Ensured the selected features were not only valuable to users but also positioned the app competitively in the market.
User Journey Mapping:
Workshop & Analysis: Conducted workshops and collaborated with stakeholders to map out various user journeys within the trading app. Explored diverse scenarios, considering different user personas, their motivations, pain points, and interactions with the app.
Insights for Experience Enhancement: Extracted valuable insights from the user journey mapping sessions to identify critical touchpoints and moments that mattered most to users. This exercise informed the design process to optimize these crucial interactions for a superior user experience.
Information Architecture:
Structuring Content & Navigation: Developed an information architecture that reflected the insights from the user journey mapping. Structured content hierarchies and navigation paths that aligned with the identified user personas, ensuring intuitive access to key features and information.
Sitemaps & Content Organization: Created sitemaps and content organization frameworks that facilitated easy access to features such as portfolio management, market research, trade execution, and educational resources tailored to different user needs.