Background

This portal provides affiliated financial professionals' offices with online access to both proprietary and third-party tools and data necessary to support their clients and to run their office in an efficient and compliant manner.

My Responsibilities

• Defining research objectives
• Constructing the formal research proposal/plan
• Identifying and selecting representative users for participation in home office and field study
• Recruiting and scheduling all interview participants
• Facilitating one-on-one interviews
• Analyzing all elicited data
• Creating executive-level research summary report
• Applying research findings and best practices to potential wireframe concepts

Team

• Researchers: 1
• Participants: 32 home office and field office users within a 2-hour driving radius (for cost control)

Timeframe

• Summer 2016
• ​Conducted concurrently with other regular duties
• Three months from initial assignment to final deliverables

Platforms

• Desktop
• Tablet

Problem Statements

The entire Portal Redesign project had been greenlit due to the following concerns with the current version at the time:

• Originally implemented in 2001, siloed functionality had been added and loosely coupled together over the past 17 years.
• A narrow browser configuration was required for all applications to function as expected.
• Framework did not scale to accommodate varied screen sizes on mobile devices (a Citrix solution was in place for tablet access)
• Screen real estate was being inappropriately utilized.
• Low information scent - Initial training for a new financial professionals' office was heavy on location and purpose of applications.

Personas

Home Office Persona

Back office support staff that needs to access accurate information quickly and requires a thorough understanding of the tools that a financial professionals' office uses.

Office Assistant Persona

Financial professionals' front office staff member that prides herself on submitting requests accurately and completely the first time.

Advisor Persona

Charismatic salesman that wants to spend more time with clients and less time with systems.

Recruiting Process

Two different data stores containing demographic information on financial professionals' offices were queried to identify those that were located within a two-hour driving distance from the home office, and potential participants were selected that would provide a mix of different office structures.

Generative Research Study Invitation Email (redacted)

A targeted email was sent to potential participants from affiliated financial professionals' offices within eastern Nebraska and western Iowa.

Home office participants were selected from each of the financial professional-facing departments to ensure that voices with possibly different perspectives were included in the research.

Members from each of the identified user personas were interviewed one-on-one in order to identify the biggest pain points that a redesigned portal would intend to resolve, and the standards by which our users would measure the success of our redesign.

Research Components

The recommendations resulting from the study were to be limited to the framework of the portal itself, and were not to include the redesign of any existing applications within that framework; research on the latter was expected to be conducted at a later stage of the project.

As such, each interview was structured with two distinct activities scheduled for 30 minutes each:

1. Word Association - Both Emotive and Descriptive - of the current portal versus the user's ideal vision of the new portal.
2. Card sort - A "think aloud" activity to identify the user's mental model of the information architecture of applications available within the portal.

Word Association Activity - Notes elicited from one participant

Card Sort Activity - One participant's mental model

Research Process

Word Association - Participants were asked for a list of adjectives describing the current portal and their ideal vision of a redesigned portal. Each term was placed on a grid based on its Emotive or Descriptive qualities. A grease board captured the participants responses and served as a reminder of each explored concept.
​
Card Sort - 35 laminated "application" cards and six blanket "bucket" cards were provided to each participant for grouping and labeling. An "I don't know" bucket was included for the participant to "discard" any applications that did not apply to any part of their office model.

All interview activities were audio recorded with the consent of each participant. These transcriptions provided helpful context during review and analysis, which was both quantitative and qualitative.

Semiotic Analysis

I created word clouds for all Emotive and Descriptive responses, under both Current and Ideal scenarios, for each persona. I ultimately combined responses from both Office Assistants and Financial Professionals into one single "Financial Professionals' Office" persona, basing this decision on two main factors:

• Due to availability/location, the Home Office persona had about the same participant rates as both the Office Assistant and Financial Professional personas combined.
• While different parts of the system were of primary focus between the two Financial Professionals' Office personas, their overall responses expressed similar characteristics that allowed for this combination to be made without forfeiting a distinct opportunity for analysis between the two.

Emotive responses of the Home Office persona

Emotive responses of the combined Financial Professionals' Office persona

 ​Next, I compared responses from the same category across the two personas by grouping synonyms together for semiotic analysis. 

Current Emotive responses for grouping and comparison between the Home Office and Financial Professionals' Office personas.

Lastly, to provide a clear set of goals for the redesign project, I broke down each Descriptive term provided by all participants into one of four main categories:

• Table Stakes - Must-haves for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
• Functionality - Action verbs related to system behavior and the ability of the user to successfully complete a task
• Look and Feel - Aesthetic components
• Non-Functional - Overall system operations

Table Stakes

Look and Feel

Functionality

Non-Functional

I then used the results of the semiotic analysis to assemble a report to smoothly transition the raw research data into usable recommendations.

final_report_redesign_research_redacted.pdf
File Size:	472 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

---

User Stories and Concepts

Last, I extended these research recommendations out into clear user stories and early concept visualizations. In particular, two specific stories emerged from the research:

1.  A common frustration across the vast majority of users was the time required to follow up on the status of individual items spread across several different locations within the current portal - this uncovered the need for a consolidated real-time "Items for Attention" list.

Consolidated "Items for Attention" user story

Consolidated "Items For Attention" initial screen concept

2.  The card sorting activity revealed that the mental model and workflow of each user varied, without many consistent patterns - these findings revealed the need for a customizable "Applications" menu.

Customizable "Applications" menu initial screen concept

Customizable "Applications" menu user story

Key Outcomes and Highlights

Feedback from pilot offices positively correlated with the recommendations from the research study.

 I especially like that each user can select the applications they work with most often, and not clutter up the system with applications that are rarely used. Having the Alerts & Notifications on the Home Page is great. Placing these in a central location is a real time-saver."
Shelly A.
Financial Professional

While the final implementation was designed and developed by a third-party vendor, the main concepts that emerged from the initial research study were included in the final product. ​The redesigned portal was officially released in late 2019.

Consolidated "Alerts and Notifications" - actual implementation (redacted)

Alerts and Notifications provides one single location that lists out all items; selecting any record drills in to the underlying application for the issue to be resolved.

"Applications" menu - actual implementation (redacted)

The Applications menu allows the user to select those to appear both within "My Apps" and on the main screen. The apps on the main screen can be moved (drag and drop) in any order the user prefers.

DROP ME A LINE

Like what you see? Let's get in touch!

Diana Criser, CUA, CXA
User Experience Practitioner
​Omaha, Nebraska

402.598.4969