August—November 2018 | 17 weeks | Multiple Define & Design Projects
CLIENT Nationwide Financial Digital Planning Department
TEAM UX Lead | Lead Researcher (myself) | Researcher | Content Writer | Visual Designer | Creative Technologist
MY ROLE Research planning and execution | Insights communication | Stakeholders collaboration | Information architecture
Nationwide offers financial products such as life insurance and annuities to consumers through financial advisors. In August 2018, the UX team was asked to improve advisors' website experience, with focus on five business-driven projects. The project team closely collaborated with our internal clients to ensure alignment and advocate for the users. I led the research aspect of the projects, using various methods to understand how advisors work with their clients and how the website could provide support throughout that process.
Note: I can't present specific findings, recommendations, or design due to NDA. I shared my process as much as I can. Feel free to reach out via email or LinkedIn if you would like to know more.
CONTENTS The ask | General approach | Process & research methods | Results | Reflections
Our client is company's Digital Planning department. Each year, they build business cases for improving NationwideFinancial.com and secure IT resources to do so. In August 2018, they asked UX to develop solutions for five projects in four months:
While the five projects were supported by their own business goals, they overlap significantly in terms of what user needs they might address. It would be unwise for us to put on a blinder and approach these projects completely separate from each other.
I proposed and advocated for foundational research to understand:
This enabled us to:
We intentionally included our internal clients in our "messy" design process. We met regularly to explore the problems space, ideate, and iterate on concepts together. I encouraged clients to observe research sessions behind a mirror and participate in note-taking and end-of-day debrief.
The benefits of this collaborative approach are:
The UX leadership team instructed us to experiment with the agile method and set an example for the UX team. A sprint schedule was set for us:
While the compressed timeline presented certain challenges (e.g., kicking off a recruitment before planning the research, iterating with very limited sample size), it also encouraged us to make decisions faster and complete a huge amount of work in a short time.
This timeline illustrates what we did for each project. You might wonder why everything happened in this specific order with no apparent logic. Long story short, we did what made the most sense at the time. It involved some prioritization on our clients' side and some muddling through on our side.
Past research review
I reviewed 77 UX and market research reports, pulled out insights relevant to each project, and built a wall of knowledge to share with team and clients. Building on past research saved time and effort.
Experience mapping
Building on a user journey framework from a past project, I dived deeper into the the specific activities and resources associated with each stage. This foundational research helped us understand what user needs we might solve for and how our projects fit into users' journey.
Navigation tasks
The first round of navigation testing was diagnostic--understanding what's broken, why, and how to fix it. The second and the third round were evaluative--testing if the new navigation structures hit the mark.
Data Prioritization
Nationwide has hundreds of pieces of data on every mutual fund. We needed to know which pieces should be displayed and how they should be organized. This usually calls for a card sorting exercise and a larger sample size, but I opted for a qualitative method to allow time for other activities.
A research report was produced to:
The clients were able to build a business case for all projects in the new fiscal year and have handed over them to the build team. They required more work from the same project team, because they were happy with how we work quickly and collaboratively.
Why should clients or stakeholders be bothered with the messy process of design thinking whey count on us as the expert? I have a few answers:
Having said all the good things--it's a huge time commitment, so be sure to set expectation with whoever you want to include in your process.
Recruiting is easily overlooked due to how mundane it is, but hey, you can't do research without participants. It's good practice to include time for recruitment in project schedule, especially working with a hard-to-reach audience like financial advisors.
It's not disastrous if you didn't, you can always adjust and adapt. We had to make some adjustments or compromises:
I know this sounds really basic. Thorough documentation is excellent for many things: backing up research findings when they are challenged; helping the team recall details on design rationale; quickly putting together a final report (or a portfolio piece).
I made the mistake of not documenting as much as I can in this project. We said we were not going to write a final report, because we were experimenting with the sprint schedule, doing things differently and quickly. Guess what, clients asked for a final report at the end of the project and I struggled with it. I still had discussion guides, notes, toplines, and some photos, but I wish I had findings to back up every design decision we made, even when it seemed obvious at the time; I wish I had the exact version of the prototype that I tested; I wish I took photo of every exercise we did with the participants.
More work
From complaints to happier customers and better productsdiscovery | experience strategy | 2019
Navigate Complexity: Nationwide Financial Website Redesigngenerative | evaluative | concurrent projects | 2018
Design for Autism: Empowerment, Awareness, and Acceptancegenerative | co-design | research through design | 2017
Health Insurance Simplifiedgenerative | experience design | 2016
© 2019 Yiying Yang