UX Design & Strategy — August - December 2016 — Huge, Inc.
THE ASK
Create Morgan Stanley's first successful digital investment product — akin to a robo-advisor. Deliver an experience that can be leveraged as a new digital prospect acquisition tool in the future.
Today, the Wealth Management division of Morgan Stanley traditionally serves clients through dedicated Financial Advisors. To compete with startups and online brokerage firms, Morgan Stanley determined that they needed automate their core business offering. Robo advisors were becoming more and more popular with millennials who prefer the convenience of digital channels over phone or face-to-face interactions.
MY ROLE
Associate Experience Director — I oversaw an experience design team throughout user research, concepting, detailed wires and design phases. I presented work to key stakeholders and clients.
For the MVP, I was hands-on in creating user journey diagrams, creating wireframes, and documenting functional annotations.
THE TEAM
Judy Podraza - Associate Experience Director
Keith Price - Associate Experience Director
Andre Cardoso - Sr. Product Designer
Victor Nogueira - Sr. Product Designer
Kevin Hertel - Product Designer
Richard Davy - Creative Director
Tomoko Kuwahara - Art Director
Frank Reichert - Sr. Visual Designer
Pilar Torcal - Visual Designer
KEY USER INSIGHT
Most users don’t have the confidence, tools, time, or knowledge to take complete control of their investment, and they admit to needing help.
We conducted ethnographic research in three markets — Houston, New York, & Los Angeles — to better understand user's investment needs, financial habits, pain points and unspoken needs to inform our MVP and future product roll outs.
SIMPLIFYING THE COMPLEX
The most complicated, but most important graph illustrates the user's projected investment growth over time. From speaking to users, we saw that few people knew how to interpret the graph.
Instead of showing the user their graph at the end of an onboarding quiz, I designed the experience in a way that helped explain how the graph is built and what it means.
HOLISTIC APPROACH
To make sure we were designing for every use case and business need, we created end-to-end user journeys for every state of the experience.
ONBOARDING
Setting up a financial goal and investment strategy can be complicated. In our truly mobile-first experience, we simplified the flow by creating a guided, step-by-step experience.
INVESTMENT THEMES
Morgan Stanley predicted that millennials would want to align their financial goals & investments to their personal values.
Thematic investing was a key differentiator in this robo advisor experience. MS created three portfolio strategies centered on companies and funds that aligned with the portfolio's intent.
