ARQ Wealth App
CLIENT
ARQ Wealth LTD,
UK
Services
UI/UX
Research
Date
2019 - 2021
Research
ARQ was built to address key issues like unhappy investors because of their investment's performance, worries about independence, poor services from relationship managers, and high costs, breathing new life into the wealth management industry by providing a revolutionary new investment performance analytics tool designed to help clients and wealth managers alike make better decisions and increase wealth.
Overview
The challenge:
Design the most transparent, independent and personalised wealth management experience and to create a mobile offering that is both streamlined and user-centric, the very elements today's users demand from their financial advisors.
My role:
Lead UX/UI designer and researcher
Tools:
Photoshop, InVision, Figma, Sketch, Typeform, Adobe Premiere, Post-its, Usertesting.com
Design process
Traditional UX design methods are lengthy. Since I was limited with time, I decided to leverage a combination of Lean UX and Design Thinking methods in order to accelerate the process from the first concept of the product through the design and development.
Discover and define
Defining the problem, validating if there is a real problem to solve, understanding the personas, and identifying their needs, motivations and frustrations when it comes to managing their investments by conducting quantitative and qualitative research with individuals in my target audience.
After discovering their habits, goals needs, pain points and other tools were they using, I managed to answer the following questions:
• How do users manage their investments?
• What are users' investment goals?
• What other apps are they using to manage their investments?
• What features are the most important to them when making investment decisions? What pain points are they encountering?
After discovering their habits, goals needs, pain points and other tools were they using, I managed to answer the following questions:
• How do users manage their investments?
• What are users' investment goals?
• What other apps are they using to manage their investments?
• What features are the most important to them when making investment decisions? What pain points are they encountering?
Key insights
How do users manage their investments?
• Monitoring their fund investments in a Google spreadsheet for consolidation
• Using additional apps like Hargrave's Landsdown, A J Bell, St James Place, Charles Schwab, and Vanguard to change and track their fund investments
• They usually manage their investments once a month
• Most of them reported that all the investments are done on their own, without the help of professional financial advisors
What are users' investment goals?
• Users are motivated to save in investment funds mainly for early retirement
• They have financial goal as paying for their children's education, helping them buy a house or buying a vacation house
• Other long-term goals mentioned: investment income, ensuring a safe nest for them and their family and having enough money for unexpected expenses, to earn to live a comfortable life
What features are the most important to them when making investment decisions? What pain points are they encountering?
• Analysis of their investment risk profile
• Investment ideas
• Personalised news insights
• Top 10 best-performing funds based on their current fund performance
• Market valuation of their property
• ESG
Who are the target users?
• Both men and women in the UK
• Age group 30 – 50
• Fund investment value >£50k
• Individuals who are already interested in fund investment management and are motivated to earn more
I followed this by examining the state of the current market space – in this case, the management investment space, looking for what do they offer, demographic information, trends and features.
I have selected the competitors and explored their mobile apps, capturing their weaknesses and learning opportunities.
• Monitoring their fund investments in a Google spreadsheet for consolidation
• Using additional apps like Hargrave's Landsdown, A J Bell, St James Place, Charles Schwab, and Vanguard to change and track their fund investments
• They usually manage their investments once a month
• Most of them reported that all the investments are done on their own, without the help of professional financial advisors
What are users' investment goals?
• Users are motivated to save in investment funds mainly for early retirement
• They have financial goal as paying for their children's education, helping them buy a house or buying a vacation house
• Other long-term goals mentioned: investment income, ensuring a safe nest for them and their family and having enough money for unexpected expenses, to earn to live a comfortable life
What features are the most important to them when making investment decisions? What pain points are they encountering?
• Analysis of their investment risk profile
• Investment ideas
• Personalised news insights
• Top 10 best-performing funds based on their current fund performance
• Market valuation of their property
• ESG
Who are the target users?
• Both men and women in the UK
• Age group 30 – 50
• Fund investment value >£50k
• Individuals who are already interested in fund investment management and are motivated to earn more
I followed this by examining the state of the current market space – in this case, the management investment space, looking for what do they offer, demographic information, trends and features.
I have selected the competitors and explored their mobile apps, capturing their weaknesses and learning opportunities.
User personas
To synthesise my research findings and my target user's needs and goals, I established my primary persona, "Griffin". This persona will help inform my design process going forward, ensuring I make decisions with him in mind.
Empathy map
To gain a deeper understanding for my primary user's wants and needs, I reviewed my notes and observations taken during my 1:1 interviews and developed this empathy map. This tool helped me to get to know my users by allowing me to put myself into their shoes.
Business goals and user goals
While a focus on the user is central for UX designers, for me, it's equally as important to keep the needs and goals of the business in mind. To develop an MVP (minimal viable product), the features needed to be not only desirable to the user, but feasible and viable for the business. To achieve this balance, I drew up a diagram of business goals vs. user goals; the area where they overlap will direct my design going forward.
Product requirements
Before designing new user journeys, I needed to determine what I was going to design and what features needed to be prioritised. I used a product requirement roadmap to help me narrow down high-level goals and identify what features will be required to achieve each goal.
Hypotheses
Despite collecting enough evidence to begin the sitemap and user flow creation, I led the brainstorming and creation of hypotheses to help us understand which of our assumptions were right and which were wrong. We validated them through a series of tests and eventually, based on the results, we were able to define decisions about our product that made sense for everyone.
Feature prioritisation
I chose the 2x2 Matrix method for this step because the lean aspect of it. The 2x2 Matrix process reduces the amount of work in progress while also eliminating waste. After building the matrix. We determined that developing the customer journey will be a highly valuable undertaking that will not require much effort. After plotting it on their 2×2 grid, we could then see this is the task to focus on first.
Integrating with multiple investment platforms will also be valuable for this project. It will be necessary. However, the integration will require a lot of effort. That places this task in the "Do it next" quadrant, so they will work on it after they've designed and mocked up the entire user journey.
Finally, we realized a small percentage of the users needed tools to help them save money. That means we needed to create tools for this aspect. However because this is a low-value task, we placed it lower on their priority list.
Integrating with multiple investment platforms will also be valuable for this project. It will be necessary. However, the integration will require a lot of effort. That places this task in the "Do it next" quadrant, so they will work on it after they've designed and mocked up the entire user journey.
Finally, we realized a small percentage of the users needed tools to help them save money. That means we needed to create tools for this aspect. However because this is a low-value task, we placed it lower on their priority list.
ARQ User Flow
After establishing the sitemap, I sketched multiple wireframes for the app. I then created a mobile user flow and integrated the designs into the flow to identify the potential paths that my user might take as well as help me in visualizing how I'll design the layout of my feature. After testing the low-fidelity wireframes and iterating, I have integrated the final designs into the flow.
High Fidelity Wireframes
After testing, I created high-fidelity designs and we have usability tested the flow again.
New challenge
After going live, we have discovered that very few people added an investment account so we have decided to move our focus on the onboarding to entice the users to add their investment accounts.
Onboarding UX is the design of a flow or series of flows that give the user a guided introduction or explainer of the product, set up some initial preferences, or point out critical UI elements in an interface.
For ARQ, the onboarding process also necessitates uploading personal financial information to populate the dashboard — which currently requires a significant commitment of time and effort.
Onboarding UX is the design of a flow or series of flows that give the user a guided introduction or explainer of the product, set up some initial preferences, or point out critical UI elements in an interface.
For ARQ, the onboarding process also necessitates uploading personal financial information to populate the dashboard — which currently requires a significant commitment of time and effort.
Commitment vs user onboarding
• Create a demo pathway that users will relate to
• Must be a super simple user flow under 2 minutes before they enter the app and can begin exploring.
• Must be accessed before account creation and after
• Must be a super simple user flow under 2 minutes before they enter the app and can begin exploring.
• Must be accessed before account creation and after
