Feed — Dan Murphy

Creating a Financial Feed to Engage Younger Investors

The primary goals within investment and banking experiences are to view accounts, transact, and research markets/news. However, we saw an opportunity to offer more to our younger user base by introducing a discovery-focused feed into the financial experience, sparking early engagement and fostering deeper conversations between users and our offerings.

The Situation

Social media platforms had popularized the concept of a home page with a destination for exploration, driving user engagement through discovery. Our goal was to introduce a similar concept to the financial experience, targeting a younger demographic of investors who showed curiosity and a hunger for discovery.

My Role

I played a pivotal role in the concept phase, contributing to the design of a new feature that would intelligently connect usage with relevant information and functionality. This involved leading co-creation sessions, mocking up potential information cards, and laying the foundation for a personalized experience that would encourage ongoing engagement.

Discovery Phase

To better understand our target users, we organized co-creation sessions with small focus groups of investors aged 24-34, with an income of $50K-200K, interested in engaging and learning more about finances and investing. We sought to answer key questions like:

What types of experiences would support learning about investing?
What information would young, savvy prospects want to explore?
How can we personalize content to meet their needs?

Through discussions and sketching, we identified common themes that guided our concept development:

Simplify the complex: Keep the content straightforward and engaging.
Personalize the experience: Offer information based on user profiles.
Make it interactive: Provide news and updates relevant to individual investments.
Encourage discovery: Show comparisons and milestones to promote deeper engagement.

These insights led us to the concept of a personalized financial feed that would offer relevant content to users based on their interests, actions, and investment profiles.

Execution

I co-facilitated the co-creation sessions, moderating discussions and sketching out emerging ideas. After compiling an inventory of existing content, I worked with the team to brainstorm additional "nice-to-have" features that could enhance the user experience. I created mock-ups for potential information cards, such as price trigger notifications, user performance comparisons, and balance milestones.

These mock-ups were used to create a strategy for a personalized financial feed, which could evolve over time based on user interaction and engagement. The design was carefully crafted to minimize disruptions while encouraging users to explore and learn more about their investments.

early card concepts — Early Card Concepts

Results

Upon release, we conducted an "unboxing" study with 12 participants to gather qualitative feedback. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with one participant noting that the new feed feature "gives more reason to use the application outside of just making trades" and "adds a level of necessary customization."

The data from the first few months indicated that over 50% of users were engaging with the feed, a promising start for an element of the experience designed to foster ongoing user engagement and learning.

I'm proud to share that this innovative feature earned an honorable mention for the Fidelity App in the 2017 Webby Awards, a testament to the impact of our work in transforming the way younger users engage with financial products.

Thanks to the Mobile Design Team