Background information
Our company, LPL Financial, is the nation's largest independent financial broker with over 2,000 advisors, 1.2 million investors, and $1.4 trillion AUM. We have several business websites to serve our customers' needs, including an app that allows the investors to keep track of their portfolio.
The Account View app was created 7 years ago to meet the needs of the investors. At that time, there was a small design department, and for the most part, the developers were given dev assignments without any UX designer input. The app was basic enough to just get by doing this.
Business request
As the number of advisors joining our platform increased, so did their feedback. Many requested more features, like more details on the positions screen, advanced settings, editing capabilities, and direct communication between investors and advisors. To keep up with their demands, leadership promoted these as roadmap priorities.
Eventually, leadership decided to dedicate a UX designer specificlly to the app moving forward. I was given that assignment about a year after working in the Product Experience department. My focus shifted from website Jira tasks to app related ones, including the big one: redesign the Account View app.
Starting from the bottom
JD Power is a service our company employs annually. They review our website and app in-depth, and ultimately provide feedback as it relates to how we're doing compared to other financial industry leaders. As you can imagine, based on their scoring system, we usually ranked towards the bottom.
- Does not match design of website
- Hard to find important information
- Speed
- Lacks a modern appearance
- No customization abilities
- Clear navigation
Establishing design goals
As with any large design request, I begin the process by establishing a few design goals to help me stay on track. I studied the JP Power report and reflected on what I felt were the big ticket items.
- G1 Increase user satisfaction with better content organization
- G2 Use modern components to reduce screen clutter
- G3 Provide seamless experience across AV channels
Competitive research
I like using Corporate Insights to review what other financial industry leading companies are doing. This website analyzes them and produces reports detailing why they're good or bad.
These examples and helpful explanations of why they're good and bad gave me the foundation to begin iterating.
Initial concepts
First iterations
This is when the fun began. Pen to paper. Cursor to Figma. I collaborated with other UX designers on my team to get design ideas. We flushed out our favorite designs and reviewed them in team critique meetings.
Product and design feedback
When the time came to present what I felt were solid designs to being the conversation with our product partners and leadership, I created a prototype that would help me keep their attention focused on one design at a time during my presentation.
The meeting was insightful and many notes were taken. The design exploration continued.
More iterations
Eventually, I narrowed down the design options to show 3 different structures for the overview screen. In preparation the next product and design review meeting, I created presentation slides that showcased the designs alongside callouts by JD Power and Corporate Insights.
How do I turn in just one design to get built? What would give me the confidence to say 'this is the one'? Time to log into UserTesting.
Tests and more tests
UserTesting
There is a funny side story this part of the journey. If we get to talk about this case study someday, please remind me to share it with you. As you can see in this next graphic, I conducted a lot of tests at UserTesting. I wanted to know what users preferred for almost every detail on the overview screen. This was how I was going to complete the ultimate data-driven overview screen redesign task.
Key findings
Admittedly, there were more surprises gleaned from the results than expected. For example, users preferred to see a longer list of accounts versus hiding them in a contemporary style carousel component.
Developer skepticism
During one of my dev review meetings in particular, I was faced with heavy skepticism. The tests were conducted with app users ages 50+. The dev team felt that our app users were younger, and they would have given us different outcomes. As any good partner would do, I decided to run the same tests again with app users ages 30-49 years old. To our surprise, they provided similar responses to the older audience. In the end, our app users just want to see their accounts, balances, and quick links common tasks.
Working with devs
It is a pleasure working with our app developers. They are very talented and offer helpful feedback during team meetings. We worked closely to solve edge cases discovered along the way, and the build was completed on-time, within 3 months.
Final design
We satisfied most of the JD Power and Corporate Insight feedback. The updated overview screen now delivers modern functionality as expected by our millions of users. Quick access to everything important, all above the fold. We're pretty stoked.
What's next
Since the launch of the redesigned app's overview screen, we have seen more positive reviews showing up in the App Store and Google Play. My favorite so far is "Trash to treasure" by one of our users. The story continues, however. Our work isn't done yet.
There are more screens in the app to update. Leadership has already given the green light to redesign our positions and activity screens. Woohoo!
