The client: Money Intel

Money Intel is a startup that created a 401(k) platform for small businesses. This platform allows businesses to easily contribute a certain portion of their employees’ paychecks to the employee 401(k) plan.

What is the business problem?

Money Intel noticed that after the first few weeks of installation, employees stopped checking their 401(k) plans. Money Intel wanted to keep the end users (the employees) engaged. This is so that if an employee leaves Money Intel's current client, the employee will continue to use Money Intel as her primary 401(k) administrator.

How does the user’s problem differ?

The end user, the employee, ultimately wants to feel secure and educated about her future retirement. 

Exploratory phase –What motivates the user?

We conducted interviews with current Money Intel users and potential users to determine the underlying motivating factor. We interviewed individuals with all kinds of financial knowledge, from the financially savvy, to the financially freaked out. From the wide variety of users, we realized that most were motivated to invest in a 401(k) based on three factors:

  1. They needed to trust the 401(k) provider
  2. They needed to learn something
  3. They needed personalized financial planning based on their own goals of retiring. 

We also had our users test the current site:

Designing the solution – designing lots of solutions…that lead to lots of problems

Our group spent a lot of time in this portion of the design process. We spent a lot of time diving into different flows for questions like:

  • How do we design for users who do not know the first thing about Money Intel?  
  • How is this design different for users who have signed up with Money Intel and are generally happy with it?
  • How do we get users to roll over their accounts from previous companies into Money Intel?  
  • How do we tailor the content for each user’s goals?

Eventually, we went back to both the user’s problem and the business problem and developed a flow and wireframes that would take one step forward in addressing both long-term problems.

Creating with a mobile-first approach

 

We designed a prototype with a mobile first approach. This forced us to focus on the most important aspects of the user flow.

Starting with an e-mail

Since we were targeting employees who had signed up for Money Intel through their employer, we decided to start with a monthly recap e-mail that Money Intel already sends.

The interactive prototype

 

Reflection and Conclusion

The Money Intel UX Team - We worked on a team of four designers. Most of the work was collaborative, but I was the main point of contact for our client. 

The Money Intel UX Team - We worked on a team of four designers. Most of the work was collaborative, but I was the main point of contact for our client. 

If we were to continue this project, we would want to first implement the design and see how employees react to it. This would be a long term process to see whether the new re-design leads to additional action on the platform. We would also want to design an experience that allowed users to set up their own retirement goals.