Focus:
Landscape Analysis, Product Strategy, User Research
Overview:
As a result of the early work we did with this client during my prior role at Organic, we were presented with two impactful opportunities - redesign the client’s homepage and help the client build an application that instills better financial behavior. As the strategy manager on both of these projects, I’ve have led the strategy and landscape reviews for our client. We’ve collaborated with the client through interactive design sessions, usability reviews and more formal landscape implications as well.
Within the homepage redesign, we’ve moved beyond the landscape and implications to the design process and now to prototype usability testing. I’ve led the testing and am currently working with our design and strategy teams to translate the insights into actionable design goals. Within this project, my goal was to help our designers build five design options that balanced new customer awareness with existing customer engagement functionality. Each design moved from basic amplifying the current website experience all the way to creating a what-if design scenario for virtual reality use cases. While the client’s addressable market isn’t yet ready for a VR banking experience, the insights developed can help structure the site to provide a natural progression to that use case if/when the time comes. Personally, the idea of engaging within an open canvas to better understand my bank’s products is incredibly compelling. Then again, I’ve been a proponent of VR since the 80s.
Within the financial health project, the client signed off on our landscape analysis and insights and the next steps are to move into the prototype design and testing phases. What fascinates me about this project is both the client’s interest in helping its customers achieve better financial and the tools available to do so. Through our analysis, the most fascinating insights and implications came from health and fitness companies like Fitbit, Lark and Strava. While financial health startups are beginning to bubble up, seeing major institutions move this direction is validation the industry desperately needs. The most fun part of this project has been helping the client understand the idea behind gasification - not points and badges, but the actual mechanics of good game design. For anyone interested in the basics of what makes something ‘fun’, read the attached pdf. (Highlights are mine).
Projects:
I help companies build better products through data, good design and an unwavering commitment to the voice of the customer.
