An iPad application designed for financial advisors at Wealth Advisors (India) Pvt Ltd to assist users in managing their investment decisions. The app helps automate investment processes by analyzing risk tolerance. The goal was to digitize the company’s core business functions—risk profiling, portfolio creation, and providing advice on existing portfolios—through an intuitive iPad application prototype.
As the lead UX Designer, I spearheaded the design process, working closely with a cross-functional team that included a Project Manager, a Business Analyst, and few Developers. I collaborated with the team to gather requirements, define user needs, and translate these insights into intuitive design solutions. Through regular communication and feedback loops, we ensured that the final design met both the client’s objectives and the end users' expectations.
Pen and Paper (Initial brainstorming and sketching) Axure RP Pro (Wireframes)
Introduction:
Wealth management is a multifaceted area involving financial planning, portfolio management, and various aggregated financial services. For this project, the goal was to develop a user-centric iPad application designed for Wealth Advisors (WA) that enables them to:
- View a customer’s Risk Profile
- Build and re-balance investment portfolios
- Review existing portfolios for adjustments and improvements
The application needs to cater to financial professionals who are using the platform to manage customer investments effectively, requiring features that are intuitive, robust, and secure.
Key Modules of the Application:
- Risk Profiler: Helps users assess their clients' risk tolerance and investment preferences.
- Portfolio Builder: Allows the creation and management of customized investment portfolios based on the client’s financial goals and risk appetite.
- Portfolio Reviewer: A tool for analyzing the performance of existing portfolios and making necessary adjustments.
Main Objective:
Design an iPad application for Wealth Advisors that helps them manage clients' financial information, while ensuring a seamless, efficient user experience with trust and data security at its core.
Challenges:
1. Building User Trust in a Financial Application:
Since the application deals with sensitive financial data, trust is crucial. Users must feel confident about the security of their data, the reliability of the platform, and its ease of use. This meant designing with clear, professional aesthetics, ensuring that the UI felt trustworthy and intuitive.
2. Overwhelming Data Handling in Portfolio Building:
While building and rebuilding portfolios, Wealth Advisors are presented with a vast array of options for funds, securities, and other investment tools. Displaying all these options simultaneously would overwhelm users, leading to confusion and inefficiency. The challenge was to present the data in a digestible, organized manner that didn’t overload the user’s cognitive load.
3. Lack of Contextual Inquiry:
Due to the nature of the financial industry, conducting contextual inquiry or interviews directly with users was limited. The clients' financial matters are private, making it difficult to observe how advisors engage with their tools in real-world settings. This presented a challenge in fully understanding the workflow nuances from a hands-on perspective.
Research
Quantitative Research:
To better understand the target audience and their needs, I began with user surveys. The survey gathered responses from 26 Wealth Advisors who provided valuable insights into their pain points, challenges, and desires regarding portfolio management tools. Key findings included:
- A need for clear and simplified financial data presentation.
- Desire for speed and ease of navigation during portfolio creation and rebalancing.
- Security and trust were of the utmost importance, with many respondents noting a preference for a professional-looking UI.
These insights formed the foundation for the design, ensuring that the final application addressed the users' most pressing needs.
Task Flows
Based on the data gathered through surveys and regular requirement gathering sessions with the client, I developed task flows to outline how users would navigate the application to complete key actions. This involved mapping out the step-by-step processes for:
- Risk Profiling: How an advisor inputs customer information to assess risk tolerance.
- Portfolio Building: Steps required to select investments, customize portfolios, and finalize decisions.
- Portfolio Review: Actions to assess portfolio performance, analyze risks, and adjust allocations.
The task flows helped structure the design process and ensured that all key functions were included, without overwhelming the user.
Competitive Analysis
I conducted a thorough analysis of both direct and indirect competitors in the wealth management space. This helped me identify both successful features and pitfalls to avoid in the design. The analysis provided a solid benchmark for what users expect from a wealth management application, including:
- Direct competitors: Applications like Wealthfront, Betterment, and Fidelity’s Wealth Management platform, which provide similar services for managing client portfolios.
- Indirect competitors: Broader financial planning apps, like Mint and Personal Capital, which offer a more generalized approach but could inform how users engage with financial tools.
The analysis revealed several industry standards and best practices that we could apply in our design, such as interactive charts, intuitive drag-and-drop interfaces for portfolio management, and clear, color-coded risk indicators.
Design Phase
Wireframes:
The design phase began with creating wireframes for key application screens. The aim was to present a basic visual structure of the application without getting bogged down in the details too early.
The wireframes primarily focused on the following elements:
- Portfolio Dashboard: A simple, clear layout that displays the user’s portfolio summary, performance, and key metrics.
- Risk Profiler Interface: A user-friendly form that captures information related to the client’s risk tolerance.
- Portfolio Builder Interface: Clean, modular design for selecting and adding investments to the portfolio, with advanced filtering options to minimize decision fatigue.
- Portfolio Review Screen: A visual summary of portfolio performance, with actionable insights on risk and return.
The wireframes emphasized the need for progressive disclosure—unveiling complex data in small, digestible chunks only when needed. This strategy is particularly useful for managing the wealth of information involved in financial planning without overwhelming the user.
High-Fidelity Mockups:
After iterating on wireframes, I transitioned to creating high-fidelity mockups. The design style focused on a clean, professional aesthetic that communicated trust and security. Colors were chosen to convey reliability and stability (e.g., blues and grays), while accent colors were used sparingly to draw attention to important actions or alerts.
Final Results:
The final application achieved several key goals:
- Trust-building Design: The clean, minimalistic UI, combined with clear typographic hierarchy and subtle animations, ensured that the application felt secure and reliable. Users immediately felt comfortable navigating through sensitive financial data.
- Data Presentation: The use of progressive disclosure allowed the application to present complex data without overwhelming the user. Only the most relevant information was displayed at any given time, with options to dive deeper into details as needed.
- Intuitive Navigation: Task flows were optimized to ensure that users could easily switch between viewing a client’s risk profile, building a portfolio, and reviewing performance. Key functions were accessible within 2-3 taps, respecting the mobile-first nature of the iPad interface.
- Client-Centric Features: The app helped Wealth Advisors manage client portfolios effectively by integrating client risk preferences into the portfolio-building process and providing insights on portfolio performance. This personalized approach helped advisors deliver tailored financial advice.
Conclusion:
This project allowed me to develop a deep understanding of the financial domain, particularly the intricacies of managing investment portfolios for clients. I learned that handling large amounts of data doesn’t necessarily mean displaying it all at once. Progressive disclosure can significantly improve usability by presenting only the most relevant data to users at each step in their workflow.
The project was a success in addressing user needs for simplicity, efficiency, and trust. By focusing on building a clean, intuitive, and secure interface, the app was able to support Wealth Advisors in their daily tasks while ensuring that client data remained secure.
Through this case study, I reinforced the importance of user research (even with limited access to real-world users) and task flow optimization to enhance usability, especially in complex and data-heavy applications like wealth management tools.