Northwestern Mutual App Redesign
May - August 2020
Senior Product Designer, New York
My challenge, was to define and design an industry-leading mobile app experience that provides a holistic summary of the user’s financial picture and provides guidance and tasks to achieve financial security.
I reviewed existing research and performed an audit of the current app experience, to identify key themes for improvement. Defined concepts for the vision deck, which was presented to Senior Leadership and followed with launching new IA and redesigned Summary and Account tab features.
The redesigned app was launched in December 2020 and initial results were positive, with an 9.5% increase in monthly downloads and 8x more visits than web.
UX & UI Design / Ideation workshop / User Testing
Reviewed existing research to understand the current state of the app and usage metrics.
UNDERSTAND
The current app experience was generic, outdated and left users struggling to get a holistic view and value of their finances. Majority of users were high net worth and goal orientated, focused on mitigating risk to their retirement goal. Most of the users had only one product with the company and no plan.
Identified the challenge, business goal and overall strategy on how the redesign fits into the digital ecosystem for the client experience
DEFINE
Vision for the client experience was rooted in a personalized planning experience to understand client’s goals and deliver financial wellbeing for the customer and build trust with Financial Advisors. This was echoed in the business goal to deliver an experience that can really move the needle on user retention and engagement. Our challenge was to create an industry-leading mobile app experience, that enabled both the vision and business goals.
IDEATE
Facilitated an online workshop to identify key themes for improvement and brainstorm solutions
Developed a journey map to help identify opportunities to improve the app experience. Grouping these pain points into themes, we brainstormed and voted on viable solutions.
DESIGN
Designed high fidelity wires for the summary, cash flow and goal budgeting screens, as part of the mobile vision presented to Senior Leadership.
First, I utilized the existing card designs on the client web platform and re-purposed them to the app experience. Next, I iterated designs to focus on planning and display an aggregated view of the user's finances. Furthermore, I reviewed competitors screens and re-considered Summary tab to be more task focused, allowing users to navigate to other tabs in the app for more detailed view.
Reskinned the Summary, Accounts and Spending tabs to improve the experience and IA
Identified the screen flow and generated wires, starting from the vision screens and iterating based on requirements and feedback from the team and user testing. Explored visual designs, utilizing the existing web design style guide and adapting it for mobile.
BUILD
Design handover
Detailed each screen's interactions, different states and devices and reviewed with developers. Conducted regular QA of build to ensure the designs were correct and clarified any questions
Redesigned app launched in December 2020
LAUNCH
Initial app reviews were positive, and led to an increase in monthly downloads and 10x more visits than web.
