Phillip Capital
Wealth management app redesign
What I Did
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UX Design
Other Team Members
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Isaac - Architect / Product Owner
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Atchariyah - QA Lead / Scrum Master
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Tan - Frontend Developer
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Apiwat - Backend / Full Stack Developer
Tools I Used
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UX Pin
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Adobe XD
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Photoshop
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Illustrator
Project Timeline
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3 months for design finalization and sign off
TLDR 😎
🎯 Business Objective
Identify and remedy UX issues to increase user uptake and retention.
✨ What I delivered through beautiful design
I identified design issues, developed a new design system, and delivered a redesigned app.
🚀 The result
Increased daily active users by 251%.
Background
Phillip Capital was struggling with their existing mobile app that was intended to help their customers place buy/sell orders easily without navigating to their website.
Their app (called FundSuperMart) seemed to be offering all the functionality that was necessary to achieve this objective. Customers could search for funds based on a variety of filters, they could review a fund’s historical performance (an important part of the decision-making process), and place the buy order for the fund they wanted.
Customers could also review their existing portfolio, see how it’s performing, how much money they lost or made, sell off their funds and so on.
However, the customers just weren’t using it. At most they would search funds, but never end up placing orders through the app.
This sounded like a job for me.
Discovery
I began my research by talking to the internal product team and the business division to understand their objectives. Then I moved on to interview users to hear about their pain points and expectations.
The Business Directive
I spoke to the managing director and his team to understand the key objectives behind the redesign. Through my conversations I found that the main objective was to promote the app as the main channel for placing orders. This would remove the load on their call center and reduce the need for manual processes.
The Product Team
The product team was all new and no one from the original team was there any longer. While this didn't help, it was definitely clear that this app was intended to be the flagship technology of the company. The company was ready to launch their marketing campaign for the app.
Customer Interviews
I conducted interviews with 14 users from varying demographics to get a broad understanding of their key pain points. More on that below.
Design Audit
I reviewed the existing app design and found many areas of improvement.
Key Areas of Improvement
Inconsistent Design Language
1
The app didn't follow design conventions nor did it establish its own.
Complicated Flows
2
A common flow like buying a fund seemed confusing and broken.
Poor Information Heirarchy
3
Information was not displayed in order of priority or importance.
What do the customers think and feel?
Talking to the customers, I found a few key aspects that would need to be addressed in the redesign. These aspects were present across all demographics.
Searching for funds was difficult and cumbersome, no advanced filters.
Feeling of being lost and unsure. The app did not create confidence.
The app did not communicate clearly what a certain action would do.
Overall, the app looked and behaved like it was incomplete, or buggy.
The Redesign
There was a lot to do and many aspects to redesign. For this case study I will only focus on some key areas and show you the before-after.
Search
Before
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No filters to conduct advanced searches.
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Search page defaults to Favorites. If you don't have any favorites, you see a blank screen. This would happen for 100% of new users because they wouldn't have added favorites yet.
After
Fund Card
Before
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Doesn't offer meaningful information aside from name.
After
Displays:
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Fund tags
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Fund value
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Risk Level
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Favorite Indicator
Home Screen
Before
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Information doesn't follow a logical hierarchy by importance.
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Design does not encourage action.
After
Fund Comparison
This feature did not exist on the previous app and the management team was eager to have this included as part of the redesign.
Retrospective
I had never worked on an app from the finance industry before, so there was a lot of learning involved regarding mutual funds and Phillip's business processes. While initially it overwhelmed me, I feel I'm in a better place now to take on a new finance industry app.
I was also beginning to see early signs of Featuritis and learned (the hard way perhaps!) how to avoid it by establishing clear objectives and expectations for design sprints.