Growing Wealth

Building a platform for financial planning and investments

Overview

Client

TATA Capital - the Financial services arm of a $108 billion worth group of company registered with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). They offer services like commercial finance, investment banking, consumer loans, private equity, treasury advisory and credit cards.

The Challenge

The client wishes to construct a financial awareness and wealth creation platform from scratch. The product would cater to and would be targeted to the audience of the urban India.

Outcome

A simple and assistive web platform + mobile app that introduces the new investors to financial planning as well as catering to the advance needs of the veteran investors.

Website: www.tatacapitalmoneyfy.com

Mobile App: iOS application and Android application

My Role

UX Designer (Research and Interaction)

Preparation

Research Goals

Understand industry standards and what features/services/offerings given by the investment and financial planning platforms in India.

Discover the target audience's perception and attitude towards investments and wealth creation.

Map the perceptions and attitudes with the past financial behaviour.

Get insights on the goals and motivations that lead to decision making and action.

Understanding the landscape

Studying the Market

My goal was to get familiar with the financial market and the investment domain, as i would be working on it for a significant time frame. I gathered financial reports, statistical data and articles on the domain. I studied these to help me prepare and plan the secondary research.

Assessing the competition

I analysed the qualitative and quantitative aspects and constructed a competitor bench marking. This was followed by the analysis of each's strengths and weaknesses. Below are few of the competitors in this domain.

Key Takeaways

Integration of Goal setting and tracking could help the users perform regular investments for their goals

Caputuring the investment behaviour and risk taking capacity would help capacity would help in recommendation curated investment plans that are personalized for the user

Detailed description and categorised information on the fund detail would help in choosing a particular fund

Providing investment related learning would help people with less knowledge take better decision with respect to investments.

Option to compare similar funds would help the user be more decisive while they are about to invest

Alerts about the portfolio could help the user stay updated with the happenings

Research Methodology

We recruited users based on our user segmentation – Beginner, Intermediate and expert.Then we conducted user interviews of approx. 30 mins each understanding the lifestyle, needs, pain points and values of the users. All the insights from the user interviews were collected and written down on stickies. This was followed by insight gathering on the users - Needs, Tasks, Problems and Opportunities/Expectations.

We Conducted a Qualitative Research with the Sample Size of 11 participants.

3 - Beginners

5 - Intermediate

3 - Experts

By clustering the interview findings, helped us connect the dots. We were able to draw patterns and commonalities across our findings.

Collating the Insights

Building Empathy through Personas

Uncovering Opportunity

Platform should have learning in the form of short video and articles.

For starting the investment by himself he needs the advice and guidance from someone (preferred family and friends)

Needs to know about the investment method in simple language.

Buying and selling process should be easy.

Wants more profit in reasonable budget friendly premium.

Future growth and planning for on going series of wealth planning.

Free and secure personal assistance which give suggestion according to the user needs.

Being aware that money is easily available to withdraw the money.

Goal setting and tracking could help the users perform regular investments for their goals

Understanding the audience

User Segmentation

The investment market is ever increasing in volume and growth especially with an increase in educated middle-class and technology aware millennials and generation X .Based on the target market we segmented the user base we created 3 user segments based on the knowledge level and experience.

Building the Framework

After getting to understand the market and audience, we went over all the process and functionality needed for all the personas to achieve their respective goals

Gathering the Requirement

After documenting the research along with personas and opportunity map, we went on multiple client visits as requirement gathering sessions. After multiple discussions with the marketing and the product leads, we aligned the user goals with their business goals.

The feasibility of the features to be included in the product was discussed was finalised.

Visualising the process

All the tasks that could be performed were laid down with it's steps and interdependencies. This helped us map out all the usecases involved for the tasks.

Building the structure

I invited people to help us with card sorting exercise. This helped us arrange the information by considering different perspectives provided by the participants.

I assigned hierarchy to all the features, and tasks for all the segments. This helped us create and define a structure for the platform.

Detailing the screens

Once ready with the framework, it was time for the ideas and concepts to take shape.

Before I started to create wireframes, I sketched out my designs on paper which helped me to consider and evaluate different ideas quickly. It also helped me with bringing together different elements in the system to create a cohesive design.

Low-Fidelity Wireframes

I started with sketching out on paper. The process involved defining hierarchy and purpose of each page and it's elements.

High-Fidelity Wireframes

After the building elements are in place, I go ahead and define interactions and UI. I complete it off by adding all its features and functions in place.

Visual Design

Brand colours were picked up from TATA Capital, to maintain the intergrity of the TATA product family. Typography and colour palette were decided to give the product a pleasant and bright mood. A style guide with all the UI components and UI guidelines were defined that would be followed throughout the product.

Finally, the style guide was implemented on the wireframes to complete the product.

Mobile Screens

Preview of the mobile app screens with the brand theme

Web Screens

Preview of the web screens with the brand theme

Testing the usability

It was time to test the design. We employed a qualitative testing method to observe user behavior as they interacted with the products. This approach significantly aided us in identifying areas that required further refinement.

I created a questionnaire screener to recruit 7 participants across the three segments
1 - Novice
3 - Potential
1 - Expert
These were presented with 3-4 scenario based tasks with respect to their responses.
The test was moderated in person and I observed test proceedings.

This gave us a clear picture about the critical areas to improve upon.

A usability report was divided into 5 sub-reports

- Usability

- Efficiency

- Effectiveness

- Satisfaction

- Severity

Impact

The website will be thoroughly segmented to accommodate individuals with varying levels of financial knowledge. Our goal is to eliminate the need for a physical financial advisor, providing users with a seamless experience and guiding them at step of their journey.

Increase Traffic

Creating Value Propostition through various channels like lead generation, providing assitance and a user friendly website completetly perrsonalised

One Stop Service

To create one stop solution for all your financial needs which include - Investments, Insurance and loans

Holistic Experience

Creating Holistic experience by enabling users of every segment to have an effortless experience.

Tailor Made Financial Solution

By replacing a financial advisor with portal and guiding the user with all his needs and making it personalised to the core.

Learnings

While we mostly focus creating a seamless and intuitive experience for our users, there are many other factors that play a role in adoption. Change is a big friction for users, especially when their money is involved. It's even harder to convert users who have been using other methods and products.

Hence, a financial product needs to convey Trust, Reliability and a strong value proposition to get the conversion.