Disclaimer: due to an NDA, the name of the company, branding, colors & typography, and other identifying information in this case study have been altered to keep confidentiality.
I interned at a large financial services company under their Autonomous Finance Squad, which helps users without financial experience start saving by automating their process through a service called “Auto Routines”. My project for the first half of my internship focused on iterating on a new Auto Routine MVP prototype hat helps users connect their 529 accounts to their college funds goal and set up recurring funding for it, all in one flow, so that they can save for their child’s future in a more consistent and purposeful way.
Project type
Internship
Timeline
5 weeks
Team
Autonomous Finance Squad
My role
UX design intern
A lack of engagement with the company’s existing financial planning tools
Currently, the company has a few tools and capabilities that make planning for all types of big life events easy for our customers. However, only a small fraction of users that are saving for college seem to take advantage of them. This presents an opportunity to help customers save more purposefully for their children, as well as a great net flow opportunity for the company.
👛 Account:
A “vessel” that keeps a user’s money in place
e.g. 529 Account, retirement account
💹 Goal:
A tool that users set up to track their progress towards specific life events
e.g. college goal, emergency fund goal
🔁 Recurring funding:
The process of consistently transacting money from/to a user’s account
e.g. Auto Routines
An MVP of an Auto Routine flow that helps users plan for college in one set up
I wanted to understand why our services lacked engagement from a user’s perspective, so I researched some potential pain points that they had while using our current college-planning services. I used a few methods to empathize with the users such as:
🗂️ Secondary research from the company’s database
🕵️ UX audit of current Auto Routine services
💬 Informal interviews with the target audience
After analyzing these results, I found 4 main pain points:
Lack of understanding of the different pillars of planning
“Isn’t creating a college account the same thing as making a goal?” Many users did not understand the specific value that each service offered.
Too many set-ups involved in planning
To get the combined benefit of planning, users had to set up each service separately from each other. This resulted in an effortful process with very few users completing all of them.
Not being able to save for all of college
When users got back their estimate for how much college will cost for them, they became discouraged to set up recurring funding, since most could not afford to save for all of college.
Difficulty in starting and committing for life events
Users said that they simply felt discouraged to start thinking and planning about such a difficult and complicated task like saving for college.
Trish, a mother who is unsure of where to start
Trish has a 6 y.o. daughter named Sophia. She opened up a 529 account and deposited $1,000 but has since been stuck. She doesn’t know where to start and how much she should be saving and needs assistance.
“Help me feel reassured that I’m doing what’s best for my Sophia.”
Based on the findings above, I came up with a few tasks that the user should be able to accomplish with my solution to guide my ideation process:
🟢 Create a seamless, effortless set-up experience
🛏️ Reinforce confidence throughout users’ journeys
🧩 Personalize options to fit individual needs
Leveraging existing capabilities to create a single user flow that automates planning
I took an unorthodox approach to ideation: My team suggested that for efficiency and consistency, I “converge” first and build out a single user flow that combined Auto Routines set-up and goal creation into one. I would then “diverge” my ideas within this flow to explore what this would look like afterwards.
To start, I brainstormed the general tasks that the user would accomplish in this flow:
Start 🏎️️
Gain access to the flow
Learn the benefits of planning
Estimate their future college expenses
Set up recurring funding through Auto Routines
View their new goal (created automatically)
Finish 🏁
Given these tasks, I mapped out a new flow chart that enables users to plan for college with just one set-up process. To achieve all of the tasks, I planned to leverage existing services and capabilities while also creating new screens, as shown below:
Trial & error, lots of feedback, and improvements for an optimized experience
Since I “converged” for efficiency during ideation, I “diverged” and explored many options here. There were +10 iterations in total, and I got feedback after each one to make further improvements. To explain the process behind my iterations, I categorized them into 3 phases, as shown below:
Phase 1 🔗
Main objective: link screens together
Combine existing screens and design new ones to fit the flow chart from the ideation phase
Phase 2 🎯
Main objective: address pain points
Address the main pain points that users mentioned at the beginning of the project
Phase 3 ⚡
Main objective: optimize conversion
Remove any redundancies and reorganize screens to streamline UX and conversion
Improvement #1
Improvement #2
Improvement #3
Getting formal feedback through a usability test
While I got tons of feedback from co-workers that fit the target demographic, this project could still benefit from a round of formal testing to understand how users would interact in a real-life setting.
Aligning priorities with other squads
Because I used capabilities from the other squads’ services, building this design would mean aligning priorities with them to discuss business implications and communicate with their engineers.
My thoughts on this experience
This was my first internship at a big company! With so many “firsts”, there were many things that exceeded my expectations, as well as things that didn’t go as expected. Either way, I’m grateful to learn from all of the experience. Since it’ll take too long to list everything out, here’s a quick summary of it:
Rose 🌹
Critical thinking through multiple iterations
Great design exercise to think critically and address a complex problem
Fulfilling to see the difference in the first iteration vs. the final product
Thorn 🌵
Adjusting to the new corporate work process
First time collaborating with different roles and departments in a corporate setting
Opportunity to be more prepared and structured in future projects
Bud 🌱
Building out this project
Excited to see how this project will be implemented into the company’s app!
Thank you for reading! 😁
Let’s connect!
Bryce Lee / Product Designer
bryceleeux.framer.ai
