Case Study : Ethical investment
B Corp ethical investment company, Abundance, offer the ultimate win win.
They are “Mobilising your money for good” by enabling altruistic investors to change their world for the better while feeling good about their money’s growth.
I have worked closely with their teams over serial projects helping make research and the customer’s voice central to their messaging, product innovation and customer journey design processes.
Research subject matter varied from the deep ("What does money mean to you?") to the specific ("What financial criteria are important to you here?") but always in response to specific business goals/measurable metrics/hypotheses.
Insights from online and offline, stimulus-stimulated interviews and workshops were used to shape products and product propositions - tuning them to address investors hopes, fears and needs; ensuring they focused on their individual £return needs vs ethical impact goals.
Once products and journeys are built they are monitored using a mix of data-insight tools such as Inspectlet and Amplitude, which, with Segment, allow the team to analyse pain points, funnels and cohort behaviour and adapt and improve according to data-led hypotheses.
Tools used : Zoom, Figma, Balsamiq, Miro, Adobe, Google, Slack
Results
Our work has resulted in a “massive step up in UX” and improved customer satisfaction (“LOVE the new dashboard!”, “much more transparent”, “very easy to understand”) and engagement (~300% increase of Y1 customers’ page views of the secondary market and increased session times).
An innovative 'Donate your return' feature helped ~20% lovely investors donate some of their interest back to local community projects thus ensuring they could maximise their money’s ethical impact.
An innovative 'Donate your return' feature helped ~20% lovely investors donate some of their interest back to local community projects thus ensuring they could maximise their money’s ethical impact.
The Process
Research stimulus > customer workshops > journey design > prototype > UI
The Rationale
See the insights that framed our design decisions.
See design rationale for 2 journeys
Testimonials
Ian is a delight to work with and has been instrumental in helping us not only research and develop fantastic journeys that our customers love and engage with, but has also been indispensable in helping us to embed a people-centred approach in our product development processes.
His impressive ability to translate our thoughts, ideas and the emotional responses of customers into visual flows and high level wireframes is an invaluable asset in helping us to quickly research, test and develop journeys that actually help and engage customers
Tomur, Product Manager
Financial Services, intangible and complex as they are, challenge even the most experienced researchers and innovators but Ian has shown time and again that he can cut through the complexity and create customer journeys that make customers feel in control of their money.
Bruce, Founder/MD
All Abundance material copyright © Abundance Investment Ltd 2019-2022
Ian JR Ward is part of Ward Creative Partners.
All rights reserved 2022
Ian JR Ward is part of Ward Creative Partners.
All rights reserved 2022