frog design
Boldy reimagining how to attract self-directed investors while championing client and user values
Role
Interaction Design Intern
(Storytelling, User Interview, Workshop, Research)
Client
Leading financial service provider
My Team
Jocelyn
Francesco
Victoria
Alok
Shining
Outcomes
Bolstered user research and interviews to back re-imagined strategy
Strengthened personal toolkit for user research, interviews, and synthesis
Assisted combination of ecosystem research with target audience needs to craft client strategy
*Due to NDA restrictions, I am unable to disclose certain specifics about the client for this project. Please contact me for more information at mkha.one@gmail.com
Project
Context
In what ways would I make impact?
Frog is a leading design and creative consultancy that specializes in re-inventing strategies for businesses. They champion community and engagement, which I resonate with personally.
I entered as an interaction design intern and gained the opportunity to dive deep into research, stakeholder analysis, and understand the inner workings of a design consulting team.
Objective
How can we boldly re-imagine how to attract self-directed investors?
Our client was a leading financial service provider with an established and trustworthy image. They asked our team at frog to find a daring new way to attract more self-directed investors to their business.
In order to do so, we set out as a team to define for them what strategy they should take to increase self-directed investors.
My Role
Working towards a clear and bold strategy
In order to craft the strategy for our client, I was tasked with supporting the following responsibilities:
Client website audit
Stakeholder interviews, research, workshops
User interviews
Synthesis & takeaways
I worked towards creating deliverables such as a defined vision, experience concepts, preliminary roadmaps, information architecture, and eventually a real site fidelity prototype.
Pictured above is the high level path for this project.
Ecosystem
Research
Understanding the client and target audience
One of the first challenges I encountered was being unfamiliar with investing on a detailed level. To counter that, I dedicated time in learning investment terminology and concepts. Doing so confidently equipped me while entering ecosystem research, which was necessary to understand our stakeholders.
I conducted website audits for our client and dug into competitive research. Our team dove into stakeholder and user interviews as well; detailed further below. I learned with consulting, the project pace revolves around the client, so despite a delayed kickoff date, our team adapted and pushed forward.
Website Audit | Competitive Research | Stakeholder Interviews & Workshops | User Interviews
The frog guidance, our team, and the client work together to create bold results.
Website
Audit
Who is our client? How do they show what they stand for?
In order to understand the current experience provided by our client’s website, my question was: what story do they tell? I crafted questions (as seen below) to keep in mind while documenting the user flow of the experience as a self-directed investor.
I also focused on the following guiding points while documenting the current user experience of our clients website:
After studying the client and the current user flow of the website, I came to a few conclusions centered around the following takeaway for next steps:
Let’s examine ways our client can approve approachability, self-education, and transparency.
Competitive
Research
How is our client situated in the market?
It was important to find how our client sets itself apart from the rest. So I took the following steps to understand other financial service leaders in the market.
Through the website audit, I learned that our client emphasizes their longevity and reputation of being trustworthy when presenting to investors. However, I took note of how competitors leverage the modern shift of attention and social influence.
*Competitors cannot be disclosed in the below graph due to NDA restrictions.
Our research brought me to the following takeaway to keep in mind going forward:
To set themself apart, our client can champion their legacy, unique philosophy, and established community.
Stakeholder
Workshops &
Interviews
How can we collaborate and extract ideas from our stakeholders to understand their needs?
One of the most valuable exercises I supported were the workshops to explore in-depth our stakeholder’s needs and attitudes through workshops.
A vital part of finding a concept strategy that fits the client and their users involved being clear on what they are open to and what they see for their company.
Two of the various workshops focused on defining scope and success criteria.
Defining Scope Workshop Outline
While group activities can foster ideating, one-on-one interviews enabled a way for our client stakeholders to convey individual needs.
We conducted over 13 interviews with client stakeholders to further unfold their vision and attitudes.
Sitting down with client stakeholders uncovered the following:
Our client stakeholders hold great conviction in providing the best for customers and that they as a financial service provider are the best option.
User
Interviews
How do self-directed investors make their choices?
We conducted over 16 two-hour interviews with self-directed investors. My role was to support each interview by pulling direct quotes in order to synthesize back our overall insights.
The goal was to uncover challenges of attracting prospects and deepening the understanding of our audience. The interviews consisted of questions and activities revolving the following topics and more:
Triggers to self-directed investing
Channels and barriers around investment education
Perception of specific financial service providers
Navigating opportunities
Influence from peers, social media, or content creators
The following insights shaped the next steps:
Showcase to our client
Presenting findings to the client and converting them into actionable change
After synthesizing and reviewing the research findings, we started to compile a presentation for the client to showcase the proposed concept strategy.
However due to scheduling delays, and despite my internship being extended by a month, I was not able to stay with frog to be a part of the concept finalization. If I were to have had my hand in presenting our final concepts, here are the points I would have pushed to achieve our client’s goal of attracting self-directed investors:
Place large emphasis on the sizable community already established with our client
Develop site navigation specific to goals intended by self-directed investors and informed by our extensive user research
Consider the new attention economy while shifting the ecosystem to attract modern styles of investing
Reflection
Strategy and design are two faces of one coin, especially when working with clients that have compounded asks
Be engaged and of aid to fellow designers, so much energy can be passed around into a snowball by making connections with others
Creating narratives is a skill that takes practice, practice, and more practice!
My time with frog has been a truly enlightening and fulfilling journey. I was able to challenge myself and familiarize myself with interaction design and research. This internship pushed me to explore strategy, service, and research. I also found myself with a refined purpose to thoroughly understand users and stakeholders to the best of my abilities before starting ideation.
I learned a lot…
Thank you, frog!
Being a part of the frog pond was something I’m truly grateful for as I met an abundant amount of inspiring people with backgrounds from all over. Seeing how everyone has their own talents, pursuits, and purposes reassured me that my path can go many ways. Being able to adapt to a consultancy within design helped me understand a fast-paced environment that valued engagement and design quality. Gaining dense exposure to the early stages of the interaction design process at frog has refined me as a designer and furthered my growth.
I sincerely thank the frog team, especially my manager Jocelyn Hung for all their support and guidance. I’m excited to continue to apply all that I’ve learned in my future projects.
