Role: UX Designer
Length: Apr 2021 - June 2021
Deliverable: MVP
Tools: Figma, Google Forms
Application Overview
Betterment is a mobile and web application that provides a robotic-advisory approach to investment portfolio and cash management. The user(s) are able to set up and customize a long-term goal whether it's for education, Safety Net, General investing, or a major purchase, choose the investing account type (Individual taxable or join taxable), create goal name and target amount, and choose how they would like to invest (Betterment Core Portfolio or a Socially Responsible Investing Portfolio, after the user confirms and creates goal, they have the option to set up daily, weekly, or monthly recurring deposits or deposit funds on their own time.
Problem Statement
With the growth of the Fintech market, Users are choosing to switch over to other investment applications because of features that are not being offered within the betterment application that are offered in the competitors or too many technical issues that cause frustration. People who are new to investing are reading online reviews about the application from current and past users and are choosing to go with different investment applications.
Business Goals
To increase the user retention rate of the Betterment application.
Success Metric: The number of users still using Betterment after 90 days.
Competitive Analysis
I researched the top three mobile investment applications and performed a competitive analysis to understand what features, target audience, advantages and disadvantages each one presents on the digital marketplace.
web sources: https://cashmoneylife.com/, https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/.
Secondary Research
I conduct secondary research to gain insight into the frustrations that both current and past users were having with Betterment by using various review sources such as Reddit, IOS App Store, and Consumer Affairs. Based on my findings, the follow main pain points were identified in user's reviews:
1. Cluttered home screen interface.
2. Unable to buy/sell stocks.
3. Unable to download financial statements within mobile application.
4. No educational resources for beginners.
5. Unable to link bank account.
6. Customer Support is not easily accessible.
2. Unable to buy/sell stocks.
3. Unable to download financial statements within mobile application.
4. No educational resources for beginners.
5. Unable to link bank account.
6. Customer Support is not easily accessible.
Personas
After conducting my secondary research, I reviewed the data from my research and competitive analysis to understand who the the target audiences were and what type of services or features they were looking for in an investment application. The two personas that best fits the core demographic are young investors who are looking to get into investing and busy professionals who have long term investment goals such a college fund and a house down payment.
User Journey Mapping
I created two User Journey Maps so that I can visualize what the standard workflow looks like for both personas when trying to complete their desired tasks.
Solution
Based on the personas and user maps, the most common pain point seemed to be centered around the inability to view relevant or specific financial data for a particular goal on the home screen. The best solution would be to design an option where users are able to pick specific goal and only view that goal's information on the home screen.
Low-Fidelity Wireframing
I designed the mockups to still implement the layout and workflow that betterment has of creating a goal, but I added the switch goal button so that the user has the option to switch between goals allowing them to focus on the data on each individual goal. I decided to put the switch goal button next to the add goal button so users do not have to scroll or complete a different workflow in order to see it.
Usability Testing
I decided to conduct a performance based usability test where I asked the user to demonstrate a workflow of the task of creating a new goal and being able to to switch to the goal that was just created. The responses will help me in developing a final prototype.
Scenario: Stephanie wants to start a college fund for her 5 year old son Marco and wants to deposit money into her account on a monthly basis. She wants the new goal to be the focus on her home screen and does not want to view any other financial data for the foreseeable future.
Task: Please perform the workflow of establishing a college fund for Marco and switch the goal so that you can view it in the home screen.
Results
At the the end of the usability test, I looked over the feedback that I received from the survey and it mt with mostly positive reviews for its simple user flow and content layout. Some of comments I received included:
-"I could easily find the filter option"
-"I like how simple it was to complete my task"
-"The one thing I would change would be the adding a back button to the "What would you like to do" screen.
Final Prototype
In the final prototype, I kept Betterment's design system and processes and created the Switch Goal dropdown so that users are able to switch goals and view relevant information on the home screen.
Design Retrospective
For my first ever UX project and case study, I feel that I did a good job in following the design framework that was introduced to me and other students in the 6 week Elvtr course. There are a couple of things that I wish that could have done differently to create a better product. I wanted to conduct user interviews so that i could have a face to face interaction with the user so that I could really empathize with their frustrations through their verbal and body language. I also feel that I could have gotten more insight into the pain points through conversing with the user rather than researching different review sites. I also wished that I had more participants during the usability testing phase so that I could have gotten more feedback and detailed responses from users rather than a few words responses from the usability testing survey.