Our team at Deloitte delivered a complete overhaul of Vanguard’s entire Participant Experience – where a user will interact and manage their employer sponsored 401(k) plan.
Product Design
Research
Engineering
Copywriting
Product Management
Product Analysts
Client Stakeholders
Consultant Team
Dashboard
Increase Contribution
Compare Contribution
401k Withdrawal Flow
Error Messaging & Alerts
Information Architecture
The Vanguard Participant experience was in need of a design over-haul. It was cluttered, confusing, and out-dated.
Investing for retirement is a complex process. The former experience only added to that complexity.
This being 401k experience, our user base was quite large, spanning ages, professions, and life needs. Due to this complexity, our research team chose to view these experiences in segments of “journeys”, rather than the typical wrapped-up user persona.
To understand them better our research team conducted 6-months of in-depth research with over 50 participants to uncover insights across the different journeys from enrolling, to saving, getting ready to transition to retirement, and living off of savings as a retiree.
Across 4 journey-based groups
Generative and evaluative research & synthesis
Our final dashboard design met our aspirations of supplying our users with a central destination that provided truthful reassurance of their savings status. As they scroll, they will be met with API-powered “nudges” that encourage action for their next recommended action to reach their retirement goals.
Before translating designs in to digital wireframes, I sketch the needs of the interaction from a 500-foot view. This helps me weigh approaches and ultimately define the context and hierarchy of the experience.
With that knowledge and our insights from user research we aimed to approach this redesign by:
• Simplifying the interaction
• Establishing a clear information hierarchy
• Providing contextual reassurance for the user
From a technical POV, the design functionality needed to maintain API parity to meet the team’s feature release goals.
I use the wireframe stage to refine the design and to put in front of my collaborators, like engineers, PMs and client stakeholders.
Those meetings are key to verify that design is headed in the right direction from a feasibility and business stand point.
Before design hand off, we conducted usability tests to validate our direction for the interactive nudge design.
From those tests, the nudges performed well and received positive reactions from users, one participant even commented “its fun..its like a game” and cited that interactive elements were more interesting and therefore they were likelier to engage with it over static content.
Opportunities that we learned was being more conversational in the language used and going forward, we worked closely with the content team to achieve this.
This case study only scratches the surface of our accomplishments designing for Vanguard.
Interested in hearing more? Ask me about
Mapping the Navigation
Informational Architecture
Empathy led design
Hardship Withdrawals
Designing with complex data
Contribution History & Maximization