Voya Financial Retirement Planner
Project Scope: Desktop + Responsive Web Design + Build
My Role: Creative Direction + Digital Product Strategist
In the fall of 2018, Intrepid was commissioned by Voya Financial to re-architect and redesign their consumer facing retirement portal, increasing the efficiency and usability of the system. We were also tasked with establishing a design system that would support a full B2C platform optimization program, allowing for a more efficient development process through use of repeatable modules and patterns. The purpose of the design system is not only endure, but to allow Voya to grow at cost & scale as it is eventually applied to all of their digital properties. I lead the effort from the design side, playing the role of creative lead and digital product strategist.
Experience Pillars
After initial qualitative user testing on the old experience, our team created the following experience pillars to serve as our guiding principles as we moved through the 5 month engagement.
Simplicity and Ease of Use
Voya’s legacy system was dated and rife with usability issues, creating a sub-par experience for consumers (which was reflected in their Dalbar ratings). Our goal was to greatly reduce the time and mental load required for users to complete routine tasks in the portal (editing contributions, viewing fund performance, etc.) We wanted to create an experience that would shield the users from the intricacies of the system - users should be able to find what they are looking for quickly and with little effort.
We had users participate in a cart sort activity to help us to establish a strong data-backed central navigation system.
Personalization
Voya's retirement portal serves a large and diverse user base, which includes people at different stages of their lives and careers. It was important to design a system that speaks to all of Voya’s users, regardless of where they are in their retirement journey.
We used what the system would know about each user (age, income, stage of life) to strategically surface meaningful actions and information. Retirement planning can be stressful and intimidating, but by serving up relevant content, Voya can help to instill confidence in the user.
Reflection & Education
Ultimately, we were not interested in converting “retirement novices” into “retirement experts.” Most users of the system had minimal knowledge about financial planning, and were happy to keep it that way. Instead, we wished to build in appropriate points of purposeful friction that would educate users if and when they are about to make a decision that could have an impact their financial health or ability to retire. We established points of reflection throughout the experience (taking out a loan, early withdrawals, etc) where it is important to educate the user about the implications of their actions.
Increasing Retention
One major opportunity for Voya was to make it easier for a users to rollover a retirement plan into another internal product - thus losing less customers to competitors. Through user testing, we learned that many users didn't know that they can convert a 401k into an IRA account (or leave it as is). Educating the user about the breadth of Voya's offerings at the right moment presented a major opportunity to keep them in the brand’s ecosystem.
